


i’ll see you again another (dream)

by dreamclouds



Category: Knives Out (2019)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Death, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Marta/Ransom undertones, Morally Ambiguous Character, Murder, Not Canon Compliant, Psychological Trauma, Time Loop, Time Travel, Violent Thoughts, but you knew that already cmon what fandom is this, calm down everyone the marta/ransom tag is very nuanced, duh what kinda question, i dont know man how do u explain time travel, leading to...you guessed it, really but not really idk time travel is weird
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:07:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23013730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamclouds/pseuds/dreamclouds
Summary: Ransom wakes up on the eve of Harlan’s demise with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu.
Relationships: Marta Cabrera/Ransom Drysdale
Comments: 332
Kudos: 496





	1. Loop 1 — jusqu’ici tout va bien

**Author's Note:**

> what’s this? an idea? a concept? how tragic!
> 
> based on my desire to see the asshole Suffer™ but also Grow™. i’m not a native english speaker so excuse my mistakes. 
> 
> title from isohel by EDEN. stream ‘no future’ y’all.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loop 1: Ransom gets his first second chance.

.

_jusqu'ici tout va bien_

.

Ransom wakes up with his head spinning and his gut churning with an overwhelming sense of deja vu.

There’s a sound bouncing around his head, and bitter defeat fresh on his tongue. He gasps in air, blinking hard and fast as he throws himself up against his sheets. His...his sheets? 

The momentary panic turns swiftly into confusion as he takes in his surroundings, finding himself back in the comfort of the bedroom of his own house. Cold air blasting at his face, cool lighting contrasting the warmth of sunrise spilling from the cracks between his curtains, his soft bed and blanket curling underneath his fingers and between his legs. He breathes out a shaky breath and rubs his palms against his eyes.

The ghost of a sound ringing in his ear, the visage of light and color that escapes his eyes...was it all a dream? He can still feel the firm grip of handcuffs around his wrists, can still see Marta peering down at him almost pitifully, can still hear the slam of the police car door. The bang of the door that snapped him away from the dream and propelled him back to reality.

But it felt so real. Sure, he’s had hyperrealistic dreams before that left him reeling and confused once he woke up but...this feels different. Somehow. 

He reaches for his phone and taps on its screen to check the time. His eyes widen at the date. 

It’s 7 AM, 28 November 2019. The day of Harlan’s birthday. 

So he dreamt up the events of nine days. So Harlan didn’t give Marta the will, he hadn’t tried to kill Harlan and frame Marta for it, Marta hadn’t switched the vials, Harlan hadn’t slit his throat open, he hadn’t burnt down a medical forensics office, he hadn’t killed Fran, he hadn’t lunged for Marta with a fake knife, and he hadn’t gotten arrested. It was all a dream. Everything’s still fine. He’s going to come to Harlan’s birthday party, and Harlan isn’t going to cut him out of the will.

Yeah.

It was all a dream.

With a hopeful sigh, he flings himself out of bed and starts up his morning routine.

.

He doesn’t really think about his strange dream sequence as the day goes on like any other day. There’s a strange feeling that sticks with him as he runs his regular errands in anticipation for Harlan’s party, but he brushes it off as a particularly bad case of déjà vu, which makes everything a whole lot easier to deal with.

It’s only when the sun starts to set, when he wraps up his day and returns home to prepare for the party, that the feeling started clenching his stomach, hard, and twisting something in him violently. 

His head begins spinning, and he has to sprint to the nearest toilet to throw up part of his late lunch. He feels feverish though he can tell his body temperature is completely normal, and the tips of his fingers are shaking when he inspects them closely. 

He seriously considers caling Harlan to let him know he won’t be coming, but something prevents him from pressing ‘call’ or shooting a text. Something that beckons him, pulls at his insides and whispers sharp orders in his ear, pushing him to attend the party. The same _something_ that made him falter and think of a car door slamming and shutting him in, a pair of brown eyes narrowing themselves down at him, a thin painful tug at his wrists.

So he doesn’t make the call, he doesn’t send a text, he doesn’t tell Harlan he won’t be coming, because that would be a lie. And he doesn’t like to lie (though he doesn’t like telling the truth, either). 

He takes a long, hot shower, he takes his time perfecting his hair, and he ignores his sharp inhale when his hands hover over a freshly laundered outfit he could’ve sworn he wore only nine days ago. He eyes his sweater and scarf and coat and he swallows down the lump in his throat as he puts them on, and watches the seconds count down on his wall clock.

He tries very, very hard to not think about his dream. He doesn’t want to think about how lucid it all seemed. About how long it felt. About how _real_ , how void it was of his usual dreams’ fantastic elements. About the events that transpired then and how eeriely real life seemed to be following it.

Harlan always said he’d be a great author. Him, and his overactive imagination, and his mind overclocking itself constantly, and his way with and around words. His penchant for working outward, slaving over every little detail almost as carefully as Harlan does to his novels. Ransom thought that this assumption is rather foolish, but he sees where Harlan’s coming from. If it hadn’t been thrown away so tragically all those years ago...

The point was, he’s going to the party. His wandering thoughts had snatched his attention away and before he knew it, his body was running on autopilot and he was sitting in his BMW, driving and tapping the steering wheel in cautious apprehension. The time it takes to drive to Harlan’s house is 5 minutes, and that’s all the time it takes for that nervous apprehensive feeling to wrap snugly around his heart and _squeeze_ until he can’t really breath normally anymore.

He pulls up to the driveway and this fear, this strange feeling of _have done_ , strikes him deep and as he gets out of the car, he’s suddenly so, very sure that he’s seen this before. A dark autumn night, running across the field, murderous hatred festering in his belly, guilt on his hands but satisfaction in his smile. He blinks and it’s still 8 pm, he’s late for the party, nothing has happened yet and _nothing will happen, damnit._ He steels himself and trudges in the door, chin held high and condescending gaze down the length of his nose.

The party doesn’t freeze the moment he throws the door open. No one stops and turns and screams ‘MURDERER!’ his way. No cops are on the scene, ready to cart him away. 

Nothing happens.

“Look who’s decided to turn up,” Walt snides from his position by the arch into the living room. Ransom spares him a disinterested glance, sneering to hide the panic in his chest.

_He’s heard that before. That exact tone, those exact words, that exact way._

.

Harlan comes to him after the cake serving and the awkward birthday singing and the gifts. The family’s started to bunch up in bickering groups and he’s looking for a way out of the house. Maybe a balcony, or the porch, somewhere more secluded where he can’t hear Walt bitch about his employment status (or lack thereof).

But Harlan catches him before he can make a move away. 

“Ransom,” Harlan says, his voice grave. (And in that moment, Ransom feels his heart drop to the very bottom of his feet. He’s sure, _he’s sure_ , he’s seen this before and he’s heard this before and he _knows_. The dream wasn’t a dream at all, it was a premonition, a warning, something unnatural that’s going to come to life in a while.) “We need to talk. I have something important to tell you.”

And he could’ve said no. Could’ve wrenched himself away. Could’ve spat at the old man’s face and leave. Could’ve yelled and raged and punched the nearest thing (which happens to be Harlan). Could’ve done anything else, anything but say, “Yes?”

He hates the way his voice shakes. He’s not meant to falter, to hesitate, to show any weakness to the wolves that are his family. But it’s Harlan, and it doesn’t matter anyway if he sounds like how he feels: afraid.

.

“I’m cutting you out of the will.”

.

Ransom blinks once, then twice, and then he’s furiously fighting back something feral and tragic welling up inside him. He opens his mouth to answer, but his throat closes up and he’s choking on his words.

“I’m sorry, Ransom, but my mind’s made up,” Harlan says. His eyes are sad, lidded, but set with determination. “It’s for the best. I’ve set it in stone — it can’t be changed anymore.”

“But...why?” Ransom asks, after a long pause where he’s wrestling with himself.

“You’re asking me why?” Harlan asks with the raise of an eyebrow.

“Why now, all of a sudden?”

Harlan sighs and picks up the baseball on his desk. It’s been thrown around the house and the property so many times, got lost so many times, but somehow it always manages to find its way back into the same spot of his study. “I won’t be around forever, Ransom,” Harlan says, “I want you to be independent by the time I’m gone.”

“...What...?”

His grandfather plays with the ball, tossing it lightly between his hands. “I want you to build a life of your own. Not just rely on my wealth or your parents’ money.”

And everything clicks back into place. Ransom sees two sets of events, parallel and similar, but divergent and different. When he answers, it feels like he’s reading off a script, like the world’s falling back into orbit, but it’s a different tone, a different timeline where he never started screaming at his grandfather, but the words stay the same.

“You can’t be serious,” he says, defeated, his legs giving out as he slumps into the nearest chair, which so happens to be one opposite of Harlan. 

They stare at each other for seconds too long, and for a moment Ransom thinks he’s looking into a mirror and he realises why Harlan always boasted how they’re so similar. 

“Not a single red dime to you,” Harlan says, softly, slowly, kindly, though in another lifetime they’re locked in a shouting match, “or to any of them.”

Ransom is the first one to break eye contact as he looks at the table. At the copy of the will sealed in the manila folder. “So...what, you’re just gonna throw it away?” he mutters, half-horrified by the words coming out of his own mouth.

“I’m not throwing it away.” There’s the ghost of a smile behind his grandfather’s words. “I’m giving it to Marta.”

“Your nurse?” Ransom barks out a weak chuckle. Weak and defeated and he can’t meet Harlan’s eyes again. “You can’t be serious, this isn’t- this isn’t happening again-“

“I am as serious as I can ever be in this lifetime, she deserves the will more than any of you could ever-“

“You can’t- I’m going to stop you, and it’s not going to end so easy for the both of us, I know where this is going, you-“

“-and I’ve been trying and trying to push you all to your own lives, to make you better people, and this, this is how I teach you the lesson-“

“Harlan,” Ransom says, a period in his voice. He’s seeing double, hearing double, feeling double, saying double. He’s tired and he’s angry, he’s scared and he’s vengeful, he’s seeing two visions merge into one, parallel but divergent. He’s seen this before, he’s been here before, he’s lived this before, and he’s doing it all over again and this can go either one of two ways and he’s not ready to accept that second option-

“I’m warning you,” he says, softly, a warning and a plea and cautious and careless at the same time. “Things will not end pretty for you.”

But Harlan doesn’t know what that means, how can he? He hasn’t seen all of this once before.

“My mind’s made up,” his grandfather says, and that’s where everything falls apart.

.

_Things won’t end pretty for me too._

.

On his way out of the house, he pauses by Wanetta. He’s all hard edges and burning heat, but he stops by her quivering side with a foot alread out the door.

“Ransom?” she asks, softly, shaking, sadly. “You’re leaving?”

He touches her wrinkly hands in his and squeezes gently. She doesn’t seem to notice, but he doesn’t miss the little ticks and twitches on her face and arms that show that she’s more lucid than anyone gives her credit for. 

There’s only one person he doesn’t have the heart to be an asshole towards in this world, and it’s his Great Nana. He doesn’t miss the weak little squeeze she gives his finger.

His resolves hardens, then, and he rips himself away and slams the door as he leaves.

.

Later that night, he steals Harlan’s pain meds and fills both vials with morphine. He comes back after 3 hours to find a dead body on the bed and no sign of Marta anywhere. He fixes the incriminating evidence and leaves.

The next morning, investigations begin. And nine days later, Marta is arrested. The will is renounced and Ransom gets his cut of the inheritance.

.

He’s not sure why it doesn’t sit well in his belly. He won. That should be it. He has his money, Marta’s under arrest and soon her family will be in shambles, his own family sated.

The last he sees of her is from the house’s balcony. Her, in handcuffs, peering up at him as she’s herded into the police car. Him, wanting so badly to smirk at her but can’t find the resolve to, absolutely not thinking about how in another lifetime, it had been him there.

For the seconds that their gazes met, he swears he can see the gears turning in her head. Can see the pieces putting themselves together behind her sad, brown eyes. Can see the minuscule widening of her eyes and her opening her mouth to speak, _and in that second he thinks she might just know_ , before her head is shoved into the car and she’s gone.

He thinks, _I’m so sorry, Marta,_ and doesn’t know where it came from. He closes his eyes and all he can see is her eyes on his, betrayed, heartbroken, torn, a look that doesn’t sit well on her kind, pretty face.

The car door slams shut. The sound rings in his ear. The world twists and pulls and stretches and compresses. He’s thrown forward and yanked backwards and falling, falling, falling-

.

Ransom wakes up in his own bed, gasping for breath, the sound of a car door slamming ringing in his ears. He feels like he’s just woken up from a terrifying, terrible nightmare, one that felt so long and so real-

-wait-

-he’s seen this before, felt this before, been here before, lived this before-

-he flings himself to the side and makes a grab for his phone, frantically trying to focus on the date and time.

November 28.

He barely makes it to the bathroom before his stomach gives way and he throws up on an empty stomach.

.

_so far, so good_

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i might consider making this a full-length story, but who knows. maybe if 1. everyone says yes and 2. i can dispel my writer’s block.


	2. Loop 2 pt. 1 — je sais, je te connais, je sais

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loop 2 pt. 1: Ransom finds out some things stay the same

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this work was supposed to be a one-shot and i’d forget about it after a week, but you guys, oh boy. 
> 
> i changed the ship tag from gen to f/m and also adding the marta/ransom tag cus i had an epiphany thank u (but it'll stay an undertone so chill)
> 
> don’t mind the most-likely-incorrect french, i just wanted to be cute. 
> 
> so here it is: part 2. enjoy!

.

_je sais, je te connais, je sais_

.

(He thinks up three possibilities for whatever the fuck is happening to him. 

If he came back once only, he would’ve chalked it up to a particularly strange dream sequence. Then he would move on and occasionally think about that one time he dreamt up a how his plan for the will could have gone wrong. Then he would never have to worry about his grandfather or his Brazilian nurse or going broke ever again. 

He’d been ready to brush it off as an eerie coincidence. He’d almost stopped worrying about the loop and dedicated all his brain power to twisting the threads of the investigation. And it paid off at the end, he won, but did it _really?_

But then it happened again, and all hope for a relatively normal life was thrown out the fucking window when he woke up on November 28 for the third time. 

So, his mind did what his mind always does. Overthink. And here the possibilities are.

One: the entire world is fucking with him.

There might be hidden cameras all around his house, capturing his every move and anticipating his fuck-ups. A sadistic audience laughing at his confusion. His family orchestrating the whole thing to get back at him for his betrayal over the will. Marta being held at gunpoint to go along with the act. Harlan...coming back to life?

He puts a lid on the first possibility before it spirals. Sure, he wouldn’t put it past his family to plan such an elaborate and convoluted way of getting their way to fuck him over... But how is Harlan alive? That’s where the theory falls apart — that is, if he wasn’t completely throwing his sensibility out there in the first place by even proposing the possibility. People can’t come back to life. 

Right? 

The second possibility: he’s going insane.

This one makes much more sense, doesn’t it? Anyone who knows him can and will spread the rumour that something’s wrong in his head. And he won’t confirm nor deny anything if asked. He’s not normal, not by a long stretch; normal people don’t attempt two murders and frame an innocent person for money. That money constitutes millions, but normal people wouldn’t put a price on a human life. He did (twice, but that second one doesn’t count).

Well, if normal people _do_ put a price on a human life, they wouldn’t decide that the money was worth more than the life. He did, both times.

And if normal people _do_ go through with the murder, at least they’d feel bad, regret, stop at the last second, turn themselves in, anything. 

He didn’t.

So there’s the chance that he’s finally snapped after years of repressed trauma and emotional constipation. That he’s locked up somewhere with a straitjacket, laughing like a maniac and hallucinating the whole thing. It’s a stretch, yes, but it’s possible, discounting how _real_ the world around him feels. 

But then...there’s number three, the third possibility he tries to swerve away from ( _because frankly, the thought fucking scares him_ ) (weird how the last two possibilities don’t) but his mind keeps relapsing to and insisting that he address it: he’s stuck in some science-fiction-Groundhog-day scenario. 

He’s never seen Groundhog Day. 

( _It’s one of those movies that everyone knows the concept of, that everyone has stolen the idea from, that everyone and their mother claim to have seen it, but in reality, over half of everyone has not. It’s these kinds of things that he secretly keeps tabs of on his family. Whenever they reference something he knows for sure they haven’t seen, he scores a point for himself. So far, he’s on 1105_.)

But he knows that if that sort of scenario is what’s happening to him, then he’s fucked.)

.

_He follows the tug and look where it lands him._

.

“Look who’s decided to turn up,” Walt snides, his smirk particularly punchable. Ransom resists the urge to stride up to the fucker and sock that mouth right off his smug face. 

Instead, he resorts to sniping back a heated: “Fuck off, Walter,” and feeling satisfied at the way Walt’s face falls and he begins spluttering and trying to curse him out. 

He stalks away, ignoring Walt’s indignant shout behind him. 

.

Ransom hides away in the porch before Harlan manages to approach him to talk. His legs itch to run far away from the house, get away before the night devolves into murder, but that tug in his navel keeps him tethered to the house, that strange sense of _I’m not done here yet_ grounding him to the wooden floor.

It’s a nice night out. Moonless, dark, perfect for committing the crime of his lifetime. But that crime is a lifetime away, and he’s tied to the house now no matter how much he wants to leave. He scowls and folds his arms, letting the noise from the party wash over him like an irritating blanket that is his family arguing about politics. It's like they have only 3 topics to bitch about at any gathering: politics, him and his lack of employment status, and how _great and generous _they are as people.__

____

So today is a ‘politics’ day, and he has zero interest of butting heads with Richard or Joni or Donna or Meg. Especially Meg. Back then, he used to be able to pull her away from the allure of politics and go bother Jacob together when the adults are fighting, but now she’s a strong force in the family’s fight. But back then was a long time ago.

____

Hypocrites, all of them. Him included.

____

The front door opens with a creak behind him, and he turns his head to see Marta standing there, eyes wide and mouth half-open in a mildly surprised expression. She stands there in the doorway, looking at him, her head slightly tilted as she gives him a once-over.

____

“Hey, uh,” Marta starts, gaze snapping back to his eyes, “Harlan’s looking for you.”

____

Ransom nods. “I know-“ his lips twist into a cautious smile, “-which is why I’m avoiding him.”

____

Her eyebrows furrow together as she closes the door behind her, stepping away from the lights of the party and joining him in the darker part of the night. “He said he wanted to tell you something, and he said it was important,” she says, almost chastising. “He seems worried. Why’re you avoiding him?”

____

“I know what he wants to say,” Ransom says, and turns his head back to face the field. Marta steps beside him and copies his stance. “I don’t want to hear it again.”

____

She looks at him, and his gaze travels back to her eyes. There’s something strange about her gaze. He stands by the rule that you can learn a lot about someone by simply looking into their eyes. How they guard themselves, if they’re sad or afraid or angry deep inside, whether they’re warm or cold or anywhere in between, all that.

____

From this angle and distance, he’s given a clear pathway to Marta’s eyes. Big, brown, obnoxiously warm. She doesn’t hide her emotions well — she doesn’t hide anything well, not even her lies, if her vomitting condition is anything to go by. They’re all swirling by the surface of her irises and he plucks one out and reads it easily. Worry. For Harlan. Easy.

____

Ransom thinks about how those same pair of brown eyes had haunted him these past two (repeated) weeks. How he wouldn’t stop thinking of her looking down on him from the balcony as he’s shoved into the police car, or of her looking up at him on the balcony from the police car as his plan ends perfectly. Or of her in the diner, looking at him with desperation and trust, then of her in the library, heartbroken from his betrayal as the detective unravels his plot.

____

( _Then of her beneath him, fearful and confused as a fake knife sticks out of her chest. His body large and imposing over hers but her victory dwarfing his loss. It’s all a game — what isn’t, really? — and she won the first time over. He made sure he beat her the second time but who’s winning in reality?_ )

____

( _He can kill her, here and now, easy and quiet. She wouldn’t be able to do anything about it and he’d watch the life and emotions drain out of those pretty brown eyes._ ) 

____

( _Yet even through his resentment towards her, he doesn’t know if he can bear to see her die._ )

____

“I think you should go to him,” Marta says, nodding in the general direction of the house. “I think you two should talk. He has a lot to say to you, you know, it’s a miracle you don’t know half of it.”

____

Ransom shrugs. “I know he does, but I don’t want to hear any of it. _”Get a job, Ransom”_ , or, _”Stop sucking off my money, Ransom”_ , or a variance of those sentiments.” He rolls his eyes. “See? Nothing I haven’t heard before.”

____

“I don’t think you should be that dismissive,” Marta says, her voice cautious. 

____

“Why not?” 

____

“I know you care about him, at least a little. I know you value what he has to say.”

____

He raises an eyebrow, surprised by how bold she suddenly is. Or maybe she’s always been that bold, and he didn’t notice. “What makes you think that?”

____

“I don’t think it,” she says. “I know it.”

____

He looks at her sharply. His own words from a lifetime away echoes back at him. A part of him is back at the diner, pushing a bowl at her as he twists the situation and she falls into his game. A part of him is falling, lunging at her with a knife in hand. The rest of him is here, now, afraid all out of nowhere.

____

He assesses her eyes again. Nothing, no sign of malicious intent. No sign of an omnipotent knowledge. It’s just her, coincidence, and the universe screwing with his head.

____

“Why?” he asks, carefully. 

____

“Some things you can just tell,” she says, shrugging.

____

Her eyes are intense, but in a soft way, if that makes sense. A sentiment he doesn’t care enough to put a proper word to. A game between them, a competition to see who yields first. 

____

They’re silent for a few moments afterwards. The conversation isn’t flowing as neatly as he prefers, but the awkwardness doesn’t bother him nearly as much as it should. Here, now, he realises he doesn’t hate her as much as he really should.

____

“What about you?” Ransom asks.

____

“Me?”

____

“You’re the person in this family I know the least,” he says, gesturing as he speaks. He half turns to face her, and she follows his lead. “Tell me something I should know about you.”

____

Marta clasps her hands together and fidgets. She breaks eye contact first, and Ransom is glad to let his eyes wander somewhere less heated. “I don’t like being called ‘part of the Thrombey family’.”

____

He waits, almost expecting her to throw up on his face again, but she doesn’t. “Really?” he prompts.

____

“Yeah.” She nods. “I work for Harlan. He’s my employer, and he’s a close friend, and I care for and about him. But I’m not part of your family, not by a long stretch. I have a family of my own that I...” 

____

She trails off, biting her lip and furrowing her eyebrows. Her face could be heating up but he can’t tell from the darkness. 

____

“That you’re prouder to claim as _yours_?” Ransom asks, a teasing smile on his lips. 

____

Marta doesn’t answer, keeping her words firm to herself.

____

“You can say anything, I don’t judge.” A beat. “Anyway, you’re one of the people I _know_ the least, even though I see you more times than I can probably remember,” he amends. “Tell me something about yourself I should know.”

____

A small, shy smile breaks out on her face. 

____

A small, strange shiver runs down his spine and his gut settles down, curling, the rush in his ears he didn’t realise existed dying down. 

____

In that moment, all that existed was him, his strange days, and Marta. Everything else faded away. 

____

_Inconsequential, peripheral, irrelevant._

____

.

____

Marta returns into the house to check up on Harlan thirty minutes later and doesn’t say a proper ‘goodbye’. 

____

The tug lets him go and he leaves, heading straight home. No detours, no murder, no selfish want for money. Not tonight, at least, he’s sated for tonight.

____

.

____

He dreams for the first time in a long time that night. 

____

He dreams of brown eyes looking at him with betrayal and heartbreak and festering hatred. He dreams of Marta's expression twisting to that of fear, disbelief, shock as she lays beneath him, her hands clutching his sweater as he clutches hers, a fake knife between them and a whole world wedged in between that, too. He dreams of trust — _how nice it was, wasn't it? To be trusted, to be known, to know_ — and how easily that had been broken.

____

He dreams of the great nothing. Of how easily it could have been to kill her, of how easily it _is_ to kill her. Harlan keeps a disgusting amount of knives in that mansion of his and it might have been sheer dumb luck or it might have been a coincidence (or maybe he had known which knives were fake and somewhere in the great nothing, he didn't want to kill her) that he reached for the fake knife.

____

He dreams of Marta, wide eyes entrancing, saying _I know you_ , because a lifetime away she does. She did, she does, she always will. They’ve barely met each other and yet-

____

-and yet-

____

-and-

____

-yet-

____

.

____

(Something is wrong.)

____

.

____

_Wake up!_

____

.

____

Ransom wakes with a start, the clouds shifting outside his room twisting the sunlight streaming through his windows until he can see shadows stretching out towards him. His room is cold, way too cold for his liking. He never minds the cold, but everything this morning just doesn’t sit right with him. 

____

(Something between _I just woke up from a dream_ and _I am still in a dream_. That reality is stuttering before his very eyes and he’s caught in the crossfire, hovering in the line between both sides of the fence. One side where he’s stuck in a single moment in time and the other where he’s free to flow forward. Never tipping to one side, the dream yanking him back every time the tips of his fingers graze the taste of freedom.) 

____

(It’s all a dream, it _has_ to be, this is one long nightmare he has to, can’t, won’t, doesn’t know how to wake up from.)

____

_Something is wrong._

____

His blinks and blinks and something crawls up his tear ducts that he shakes away before it can escape. His hands fly up to cradle his head and he rocks in place, half-covered by blankets, half-shivering from his cold room. 

____

_But what is?_

____

_Up_ , the tug tells him, pulls him, and he follows, stumbling out of bed to grab his phone. The date reads November 29; he hasn’t looped back yet. He doesn’t expect to — it’s only been one day since the last loop. 

____

Something terrible’s happened. Ransom feels the bitter tang of unease at the back of his tongue, down his throat and ending at the tug at his navel. 

____

_Go_ , the tug tells him, pulls him, and he follows. He gets ready in record time and runs out of his house, nearly forgetting to grab his house keys on the way out. His heart thunders on the drive, and he’s not sure where he’s going but he’s going anyway, and his hands steer him where he needs to go.

____

_Something that shouldn’t have been there, that shouldn’t exist in the first place._

____

He pulls up to Harlan’s driveway to the sight of police cars and tape and officers.

____

And he just knows.

____

.

____

That next morning, Harlan is found dead on his couch, his throat slit open by the knife in his hand.

____

.

____

_i know, i know you, i know_

____

.

____

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i realise i use italics way too much but it's so fun to useee
> 
> this part was a lot of inner monologue bullshitting, but i needed to set the tone for the rest of the story. it’s gonna be a weird story, with a weird tone, with weird choppy chapters, and weird things happening. get ready. 
> 
> i’m a slow writer and am also very susceptible to writer’s block so i need every bit of motivation counts.
> 
> comments and kudos count as motivation. (wink wink)
> 
> edit: cutesy french quote correction thanks to haillie down in the comments!


	3. Loop 2 pt. 2 — ce n'est réel que si tu le permets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loop 2 pt. 2: Ransom finds out some things change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for all the support for this story!
> 
> we're slowing the pace down just a little bit for this chapter and the next one, and then we're going full speed, full time travel/loop insanity. 
> 
> meanwhile, enjoy some character and hints at some backstory ;)

.

_ce n'est réel que si tu le permets_

.

Ransom is there when the first round of police investigations roll over. The entire family's there, wandering about in sections of the house not taped off for evidence gathering. Marta is there, too, and she gives him a cautious, scared smile which he returns as he passes her in the hallways. He wanders about whichever part of the property he's allowed in, simply soaking up the tense atmosphere of the house.

The first two loops, he’d been absent from the first round of investigations, when the whole family’s gathered to give their account of events and alibis. It must have been as tense, as claustrophobic, as uneasy as it is now. Everyone’s wary of everyone. Everyone’s still in denial, the same things on their minds: _maybe Harlan didn’t kill himself_.

Of course, it’ll take days for the fake reality to sink in and for them to accept the fact that Harlan slit his own throat. Then they’d warm up to each other and stop worrying about a potential murderer.

And yet…here’s the thing: Ransom knows better. He’s been here twice already.

Someone must've done this. 

He snapped the first night of the first loop after Harlan told him he was getting cut out of the will, and that prompted his murderous hatred and his elaborate plan to kill Harlan and frame Marta for it. And of course the obvious answer would be himself; he’s probably the only one out of them to have the will to actually go ahead and commit cold-blooded murder.

_Well, he’s done it, more than twice._

But he knows that no one from his family can be exempt from suspicion. Any of them could have done it, given the right circumstances.

Richard has reason to kill Harlan — he wants to protect his affair like a coward — no matter how trashy it is and how trashy he is. Joni, too, might have done it for the money, even though at this point in time she doesn't know she's out of the will. Even Walt has the chops and the guts to bump his _beloved_ father off to protect his job.

(Maybe any of them could have done it that first loop, if Ransom hadn’t stepped in first and done their job for them.)

But is Marta part of it this time round? Did the murder even go the same way he did it the first time? Could he make any of these assumptions and would they even hold up in the following week? Most importantly: this time, what does he want and how does he get it?

He stops by the side of the house, gazing up the outer wall. The trellis leading up to the trick hall window doesn't have a broken piece this time.

It's a little jarring to see — he's not quite yet used to time making him its little bitch — but it makes sense. It could be either because he didn't climb up the trellis to murder his grandfather so there wasn't as much strain on it when Marta climbed up to the window, or no one ever used the trellis in the first place, and Harlan died another way. He could ask Marta directly if she had covered Harlan's death and she wouldn't be able to lie...but that would mark him a person of interest if he showed signs of knowing more than he let on.

Especially at this point in time.

One thing he's sure of: Harlan didn't commit suicide. Well, he slit his own throat, but he would only do that to protect someone he cares about. And the only person who fit the criteria that was around him at the time of death was Marta. So he _did _die to help Marta.__

__Which means Marta thought she killed him, and the only way that could've happened was if the vials were mixed up, which means someone came in and tried to kill Harlan and frame Marta, which means whoever did it is not creative. How dare they steal his idea._ _

__(If he thinks about it a little harder, it may be because he isn't that creative in the first place.)_ _

__So the vials were switched, but the rest of the details are muddled. How it happened, who did it, why, when, etc._ _

__He feels a prickling on his neck and turns to see Meg standing on the porch, leaning against the fence and regarding him with a cautious look._ _

__"What?" he asks._ _

__"Is there something interesting over there?" Meg asks._ _

__Ransom looks up at the window, cocking his head to get a better view. "Yeah," he says. He points up the trellis. "This thing leads to a window, see? No one really knows this or cares to know, but Harlan built a trick hall window in the hallway of the main bedroom and study.”_ _

__Meg gets off the porch and walks towards him, setting herself right beside him to share his view. "From 'A Kill For All Seasons'," she mutters. "Makes you wonder, doesn't it?”_ _

__“What?"_ _

__"The knife wheel, the animal statues, now this window." She shrugs. "Whether granddad built his life around his books or whether he wrote his books around his life.”_ _

__He falls silent. It's...not something he's ever really thought of. It's one of those things interesting enough to be given a passing thought about, but not pressing enough for him to find the answers to. Harlan has always been a man full of secrets, and although he shares many of those secrets with the people closest to him, there are some secrets he takes to his grave._ _

__Now that he thought about it, he has no clue. For all he's proud to boast that he's Harlan's favourite, he doesn't know the slightest bit about the meta world of his grandfather's empire. Maybe he just never listened._ _

__"Yeah," he says, at a loss for words to say._ _

__Meg nods. Then, "I don't think he killed himself.”_ _

__Ransom stills._ _

__"Why?" he asks._ _

__"I don't know, I just," she pauses, closing her eyes. A furrow appears between her eyebrows, and she sucks in a breath through her teeth. "I was woken up last night by the dogs barking. No big deal, I checked my phone, went to the bathroom, and went back to sleep. Or at least, I tried to. It's just, like, I had this-" she gestures vaguely around the air, "-weird, sort of sense that...something was wrong. I could've sworn I saw something outside, but it was 3 in the morning and I’ve had a few drinks last night._ _

"And I don't think granddad would just take his own life like that, right?" Her voice breaks. Meg shakes her head, and her eyes are half-lidded, looking downwards, almost wet but not quite crying. "I mean, he cares- cared about us. He's not depressed, life is fine for him, he has people he loves that loves him, I just don't understand _why_ he would do it.” 

_That's because he didn’t,_ Ransom thinks, detachedly, and he almost says it out loud in a moment of carelessness. He has to be careful what he lets slip at this point in time. On one hand, he can't reveal everything and put himself in the limelight for the officers to tear into, but on the other hand, he has to keep the plot moving forward. 

__(Maybe that's it. Maybe he has to solve this case, bring justice to the murder of the man who he killed a lifetime away. Maybe that's how the tug will let him go, let him move on to day 10.)_ _

__His eyes widen at the realisation. Maybe he's found a way out. Now he just has to enact it, one careful step at a time._ _

__"I don't think Harlan killed himself, either," Ransom mutters. From the corner of his eye, he sees Meg nodding along. "I think someone killed him, or at least forced him to slit his own throat.”_ _

__"Maybe," Meg says, and her voice sounds empty._ _

__._ _

__He skips the funeral._ _

__He didn't really mean to. The topic had been sneaking about in the back of his mind. Another thing he lets a passing thought for but doesn't dwell on it a second longer than he needs to. A dilemma he should have mulled over for a little longer, but just doesn't care enough to put the effort._ _

__Funerals are just that. A chance for the living to cry over the dead. Linda would be losing her shit as she sees Harlan again. Walt would be behind her, sniffing and patting her on the shoulder. Richard and Joni and Donna and Meg and Jacob would stand a little further away, some devastated and openly sobbing, some trying to hold it in together, all trying to give Harlan's children some space. It would be a private service for the family, before they would open it up for a more public one._ _

__(Somewhere, Ransom thinks that if he were to show up, he would be scowling, crossing his arms, glaring at the old bastard and thinking about how it was all a waste of time. Somewhere, he thinks that he should care more, but just can't find it in himself, and that's the real problem, isn't it?)_ _

__Would it have been better, if he were to come and scowl and cross his arms and disrespect the service? Spend hours and hours feeling claustrophobic, suspicious of his entire family and contemplating which one of them was Harlan's murderer? Because then, at least he wouldn't skip his last chance to see Harlan?_ _

_Or would it have been worse? Because then, he would ruin it for everyone else?_

__He doesn't know. He doesn't care. Maybe he should, but he doesn’t._ _

__._ _

__Fran's there, in the house, tidying up Harlan's clothes as Ransom passes her in the hallway. They bump shoulders, and she drops a piece of clothing on the floor. She meets his eyes, and sniffs indignantly up at him, disgust and resentment written all throughout her expression. Like Marta, Fran isn't hard to read, but unlike Marta, it's all in the creases of her face, not in the eyes._ _

__He gives her a fleeting thought. That she's known him his whole life, that she's known them for decades, that she's been here ever since Harlan bought the house. That the family didn't even think to include her in the private service._ _

__He picks up the shirt, and hands it to her without a word, before stalking away. He doesn't stop to see how she reacts._ _

__._ _

__The next few days pass by in a blur._ _

__Ransom gives his alibi to the officers, stays away from the rest of the family and the house, sets all his affairs in order, and tries not to think about it._ _

__._ _

On day 4, Meg shows up on his doorstep out of the rain, shaking. She doesn't say anything, and he lets her in. They've done this so many times before, so many years ago. One more death, and he lets her fall back into a _back then_. 

She stays in his guest room, and when he brings her some clothes and toiletries, she tells him, “ _I can't stay there thinking one of them could have killed him._ ” 

__He nods curtly and leaves her be._ _

__The next morning, she's gone, and he almost forgets she even showed up in the first place._ _

__._ _

__On day 6, he tears up a newspaper article, inserts it into an envelope with a few thousand dollars' worth of cash, and mails it to one Benoit Blanc._ _

__'Some things', he thinks humourlessly, 'stay the same.’_ _

_Other things don’t._

__._ _

__He's there on day 7, when the next round of police investigations comes. The family's more eager to get interrogated than he is, so he opts to go last. He roams the house, trying not to think too hard about the interrogation, and stops walking when he stumbles upon Wanetta, sitting by the window of a dark, lonely room._ _

__He almost walks right out, but there's the small tug on his navel, a careful beckon towards her that he doesn't quite understand. It's the first time the tug urged him forward in a few days, but it's not ordering him forward — it's calling him, kind and patient, waiting for him to make his next move._ _

__Ransom joins her, silent, feet padding softly against the hardwood floor._ _

__"Ransom?" she asks before he even comes into view._ _

__"Hey, nana," he replies as he sits across from her, leaning back and scrutinising her carefully._ _

__She seems to be in one of her less lucid moments, where she's not likely to speak more than two syllables. Her eyes are glazed over and fixed on a spot outside the window, her gaze in a faraway place no one can reach._ _

( _He can kill her, too, if he really wanted. She won't even see him reach for a knife. He could strangle her, here and now, quick and quiet, and she would still be staring out the window as she chokes on her dying breaths._ ) 

( _But here's the problem: he doesn't want to. _)__

____

( _She could've done the same to him, a long time ago, and he couldn't have done anything to protect himself. But she didn't; some people are just made without malice and she happens to be one of them._ ) 

____

_Is that really the basis for a good person in his eyes?_

____

____The door creaks open — time flies past when he's sitting and thinking of murder — and Marta peeks her head through the door. He could see the storm in her eyes even from a distance._ _ _ _

____

____"Ransom?" she calls softly, realising who else is in the room. "They're asking for you.”_ _ _ _

____

____A beat._ _ _ _

____

He nods and stands up. He takes a step forward, pauses, and reaches for Wanetta's hand on the armrest. He gives it a little squeeze, maybe an _I'll be back_ , _I'm sorry_ , or _I'm not done with you_ , and he can't bear to look at her. 

____

____He doesn't wait around for her response._ _ _ _

____

____Ransom follows Marta outside and leaves Wanetta in the dark, lonely room._ _ _ _

____

____._ _ _ _

____

____The first person he sees as he enters the library is Blanc._ _ _ _

____

_And it might have been a trick of the light, maybe his own jitters, or a memory from a lifetime away, but in that moment as the detective's lips twist into an enigmatic smile he swears that Blanc knows everything._

____

____._ _ _ _

____

_it's only real if you let it_

____

____._ _ _ _

____

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> character interactions! backstory! growth?
> 
> next chapter, we're continuing the murder mystery story of loop 2.
> 
> comments and kudos are my fuel for writing ;)
> 
> edit: thanks to hailie for correcting the french quote!


	4. Loop 2 pt. 3 — je ne pourrais pas faire semblant même si j'essayais

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loop 2 pt. 3: Ransom lets the world lead him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! you might have guessed that i'm updating this story once a week, every sunday. i fully intend on sticking with that schedule, but some things may come up. luckily with all the self-quarantining i'm doing, i can stay true to my word and not have an excuse to slack off.
> 
> so i lied, this chapter is slow and we're still in the second loop, but i saw an opportunity to milk out some of that good characterisation and backstory that i could't help myself! but to make it up to you guys, next chapter we're wrapping up this loop and moving on to the meat of the story.
> 
> i watched the movie again last week and just focused on our boy so i can get his character, dialogue, and motives right and, well, i noticed some very interesting things and i just had to run with it. you can expect some of that good stuff in this chapter and more going forward.
> 
> have fun watching our borderline sociopathic boy suffer!
> 
> oh also: mind the tags!

.

_je ne pourrais pas faire semblant même si j'essayais_

.

"So we're here with Hugh Drysdale, Linda and Richard Drysdale's son, and Harlan Thrombey's elsest grandson." The lieutenant sets down a phone on the table. "We're discussing the events of the night leading up to Harlan Thrombey's suicide. We have his account of events given prior to this questioning, and we are now asking follow-up questions."

Ransom muses for a second, before a small smile forms on his face and he slips back into his familiar, comfortable asshole persona. "Call me Ransom," he says, and it's almost entertaining to repeat those words, "it's my middle name. Only the help calls me Hugh."

The lieutenant nods once. "Alright. So according to the family's collective accounts, the party went as planned until after the cake. That's when the accounts started to diverge. Some said you stormed out the house, some said you hid away, can you confirm your location during this time period?"

_No lies._

Ransom swallows thickly and hopes it doesn't stain his cockiness. 

(But no truths either.)

(He's always been a bad liar. Almost like Marta, but Marta at least _can_ tell mistruths, even if they're revealed right away. He can't, but that doesn't mean he can't twist the words of his own truths to create his ideal story.)

"I left the house and stayed in the porch," he says. "They were starting to talk politics, so that's when I knew I had to get away."

"Okay," the lieutenant says, and checks his files. "So according to some members of the family, Harlan was wandering around looking for you for a while. Were you aware of this?"

_No lies. Answer the direct question._

"Yes." He smirks for effect and forces himself to relax in Harlan's favourite chair. 

"So can you tell us why you still stayed away?"

Ransom rolls his eyes and waves a hand in the air. His gaze catches Blanc's eyes in the back of the room, and that's when his breath catches for a brief second. "I knew what he was going to tell me. Everyone always bitched about my employment status, and I don't want to hear another word of that."

"...Your employment status?"

"My _lack_ of employment status."

He doesn't miss the reproachful looks that the three officers send his way. He's used to it, anyway.

"So you assume that that was the topic Harlan was going to discuss with you that night?" the lieutenant asks.

_No lies. The truth, boy._

"There was only ever one thing he could tell me that night," Ransom says. He taps the velvet armrests with his left fingers, slowly, steadily, to the rhythm of a song he doesn't know. 

(See, this is one of the reasons he doesn't have a job. He hates interviews, hates these direct questions, hates how the truth just spills out his mouth and he can't stop it, hates how he has to spin his story from non-sequiturs and butchered truths.)

(If they would outright ask him: _Did you kill Harlan Thrombey?_ , he would have no choice but to say _yes_ because a lifetime away, he did.)

( _He hates the voice, hates the tug, hates the loops, hates how everything just wouldn't fall at his feet and let him tread over them to day 10._ ) 

A sharp noise cuts through his thoughts, a high-pitched note pinging through the room from the piano. Ransom's eyes snap to Blanc, sitting there idly, fiddling with his coin, looking at him down the length of his nose and smiling, almost condescendingly. His eyes are a clear, startling blue, something Ransom thought was odd during that first confrontation. But now they were unreadable, clouded over by intrigue and unfamiliarity. 

A lifetime away, he knows how they looked when the detective accused him of his heinous crimes. Disgusted, resentful, but full of the knowledge that he'd won. 

The lieutenant coughs to regain his attention. "Did everyone show up at the same time?"

Ransom reluctantly turns his gaze back to the lieutenant. "I...arrived late. Hell if I know when the others came." 

"What time exactly-?"

He holds a hand up and interrupts the lieutenant, yanking the conversation straight to Blanc. "Nine. What's he doing here?" 

_Questions don't count as true answers, Ransom. You can't lie asking a question. ___

____

The lieutenant looks back, as if only realising that the detective had been sitting there the whole time. "Oh," he says, "that's Benoit Blanc, a private investigator here to...act as a consultant to the investigation. He's not officially working on the case with the police."

____

"Okay," Ransom says. He looks pointedly at Blanc. "What are you doing here, detective?"

____

(There's a fine line he has to dance on, careful not to step too far into either side. Especially now that he's brought Blanc into the investigation as a key player. He has to drive the investigation as close to his first time so that no unknown element can jump out and derail the whole thing. But at the same time, he can't tip them off to the fact that he knows the crucial details of what exactly happened.)

____

(A fine line. One he knows Blanc isn't afraid to cross.)

____

"I'm here as a consultant," Blanc says, simply. "This case...caught my eye. And when the Lieutenant offered this spot for me, I happily obliged."

____

That's a lie. Ransom raises his eyebrow at the man.

____

"I can vouch for him," the lieutenant says. "Detective, do you have any questions for Mr Drysdale?"

____

Ransom stares at the detective, and Blanc stares right back. He hopes the apprehension doesn't show on his face, doesn't reveal how nervous he truly feels. Blanc could push the right buttons and grill him on everything right then and there, and Ransom would have to use everything he has to maneuvre the conversation to conform to the fine line.

____

But then, Blanc says: "No thank you, lieutenant. Please continue with the questioning."

____

And somehow, that's even worse.

____

.

____

He finds Marta outside the living room after the interrogation. She's staring at Harlan's portrait, feet bouncing, arms crossed. She doesn't realise he's standing in the doorway until he coughs, making her jerk forward in surprise.

____

"Hey, you good?" he asks, cocking his head to the side.

____

She nods quickly. Then shakes her head. "Yeah, no, sorry, just...jitters, I guess." 

____

"It's gonna be fine." He tries smiling, and it comes out more genuine than he expects. "Whatever you're thinking, you're gonna be alright."

____

It's the truth. Especially now that he's on her side.

____

"Thanks," she says, though she looks far from meaning it.

____

A sharp rap on the glass startles the both of them. It's Blanc, giving Marta a short wave through the glass. 

____

"Be careful," Ransom says before he can stop himself. He stops himself from wincing. "They really know how to grill you, especially the southern one."

____

Marta nods and gives him a hesitant smile. "Okay." 

____

The half-hearted, awkward conversation stops there, and they part ways. Marta to her own interrogation and Ransom, well, back to his brooding and waiting for the right moments to act.

____

.

____

Hours later at the memorial, Marta breaks down, Fran and Meg pull her aside for a breather, and Ransom only knows about it when he overhears Meg asking Walt to come urgently. 

____

"Meg," he interrupts, stepping into the conversation and pointedly ignoring how Walt's face turns into a sneer. "Is Marta alright?"

____

"Why do you care-"

____

Meg bites her lip and shakes her head. Her eyebrows are furrowed in thought. "She had a panic attack a while ago. She's in the other room right now." She jerks her head in the right direction.

____

"Fuck," Ransom curses. 

____

Worry curdles up in his chest and it's uncomfortable, foreign, bitter at the back of his mouth, and he doesn't know why he's feeling it now all of a sudden when it might be a wrench in his plans. He can't get attached, not now.

____

(Not while he's so close. Not while he's almost free. Day ten and onwards is an open sandbox, but here, now, is a minefield. He needs to approach this coldly, clinically, treating everything and everyone like pieces on his board.)

____

( _One wrong move, and everything comes crashing down._ )

____

He's yanked forward by the tug, coming to life to keep him moving. Ransom rushes past Marta and Walt to find Marta gasping through tears by the fireplace. He moves and touches her shoulder before he can really think, and she jumps, flinching away from him.

____

"Whoa, hey," he soothes, his hands in a halfhearted 'surrender' gesture. "Marta, what's wrong?"

____

Her eyes are wild, scared, wet when she looks at him. The brown of her irises almost black in the low light, fearful apprehension apparent in the way her eyebrows are shot up and bottom lip is trembling. She shakes her head and squeezes her eyes shut for a moment. "No, I...I-"

____

Ransom licks his lips, his eyebrows furrowing. "Right, you don't have to answer that if you don't want to."

____

Marta looks at him gratefully. She opens her mouth, then-

____

Walt and Meg walk into the room. Walt looks irritated, almost offended at what Ransom's doing, and is about to say something (probably offensive) to Ransom when Meg squeezes his arm and he shuts his mouth. Instead, he sniffs and turns his attention to Meg. "Have you been smoking grass?"

____

"No," Meg answers, the lie tumbling out of her mouth so easily. "Look, just say what you want to say to Marta."

____

Walt takes the answer with a huge grain of salt if his face is anything to go by. He glances at Ransom, nose scrunching in a grimace, then turns to Marta. "Marta, we talked it over, and the whole family...we'd like to take care of you."

____

Marta looks taken aback. "What does that mean?"

____

"It means..." he looks to Meg for an answer, but she shrugs hesitantly. "I...Financially, we'd like to help you out. You've never been anything but good to dad, and for that, you can count on us."

____

"You're part of this family," Meg says. She glances around the room. "Of course...we'd like to take care of you."

____

Walt nods, says, "Yeah," and comes in to embrace Marta in a very awkward, forced, uncomfortable-looking hug.

____

She looks at Ransom with barely-hidden panic in her eyes, and he can't quite contain his strange emotional mix of worry, amusement, and...pity? He can't put a name to the emotion, and he doesn't really care to. But it's there, and he shrugs subtly back at her.

____

"I thought you should've been at the funeral, by the way," Walt says, voice muffled. "I was...outvoted." 

____

The lie tumbles out of his mouth easily, too. It would be insulting to Ransom and Marta both if 1. Marta doesn't think it to be true and 2. Walt knows about Ransom's absolute inability to lie. He's thankful that the latter isn't true. Only a handful of people know. Well, Ransom is only aware of a few. There might be others who are really observant that can put together the pieces and realise the fact.

____

Hell, Walt might know and he's just fucking with Ransom.

____

Walt breaks away from Marta and sends Ransom one last glare before shuffling away. Meg stands there awkwardly until Ransom shoots her a _look_ , and she nods, understanding, and exits the room, leaving him and Marta alone.

____

"Hey, what's wrong?" he tries again, facing Marta fully. She's tiny compared to him. Shorter, skinnier, smaller. A violent thought passes by the back of his head, and he refuses to look into it more than a brief acknowledgement.

____

"I have something I need to tell you," she blurts out, looking horrified with her own words.

____

"Okay," he says. "Is it important?"

____

"Yes."

____

"Is it urgent?"

____

"I...guess? Yeah."

____

"Do you mean 'you' as in me specifically, or 'you' as in the family as a collective?"

____

She opens her mouth, closes it, and opens it again. 

____

Ransom holds a hand up to stop her. He doesn't want her projectile vomitting on him again. "Don't answer that. Do you want to tell me?"

____

"Well it's important, I thought you have to know-"

____

"Yeah, but do you _want_ to tell me?" 

____

Marta pauses. Shakes her head. Looks down, then back up at him. "No," she says. "I...no."

____

"Alright." If it's what he suspects she wants to say, then he doesn't have to keep pressing her about it. He knows, anyway. "Well, that's fine. You okay?"

____

"I don't know," she says, and maybe that's the truth. 

____

(The truth, subjectively, and the truth, objectively, can be two very different things. He learned that pretty early on.)

____

(The truth, subjectively, and the truth, objectively, can also be the very same thing. He learned that more recently.)

____

They fall into a silence. He's beginning to hate how short and awkward their conversations can be.

____

Desperate to keep it going, he plucks a topic out of his mind. "Meg didn't seem to have caught the memo," he says, suppressing a wince.

____

To his relief, she smiles and laughs softly. "Yeah. I mean, I can't just go around parading that fact about myself. If I had a penny every time someone mentions I'm part of the family..."

____

"You'd have sixty million dollars?"

____

She laughs. 

____

_A step closer._

____

(An...intriguing sound.)

____

( _A deterrent._ )

____

"I'd be set for life."

____

.

____

( _Something's off with Walt. He wouldn't go out of his way to reassure someone, especially Marta._ )

____

.

____

That night, he dreams of the library. 

____

He's five, and he's curling up in Nana's lap, dozing to the sound of his grandpa reading one of his books aloud. He's five, and Nana strokes his blond hair slowly, hands shaking from the effort as she soothes him to sleep. He's five, and he's scared of the thought of going back to his parents' house.

____

He's nine, and he's sitting by the table, writing one of his many ideas into a story. He's nine, and Meg babbles across him, sitting on her father's lap, reading off what he's writing as he laughs at her attempts to pronounce her _r_ 's. He's nine, and he's only learnt to laugh at others' expense, but there's no real malicious intent behind that.

____

_Yet._

____

He's twelve, and he's standing stock still in front of his grandfather, Linda behind him. He just broke one of his grandfather's windows, and he's supposed to confess. He's twelve, he opens his mouth to speak, Linda squeezes his shoulder, and the truth spills out of his mouth. He's twelve, and he can't remember the last time his parents were kind to him. 

____

He's fifteen, and his world crashes and burns. He's alone with Harlan in the library. He's screaming, throwing books around, cursing the world out, and Harlan's sitting on his favourite chair with a devastated look on his face. He's fifteen, and he's staring at the knife wheel a little too long. He's fifteen, and he's angry, and he's frustrated, and he wishes it were Walt instead, and he _doesn't care, he doesn't!_

____

He's eighteen, and he's rolling his eyes at the family as they're gathered around like they're interrogating him. He dyes his hair brown, spends thousands on his clothes, and snaps at Fran unless she calls him 'Hugh'. He's eighteen, he's growing colder by the day, he's burning his bridges and basking in the warmth of the fire. He's eighteen, and he realises he doesn't have to be miserable, he can step on whoever he wants to.

____

He's twenty-four, and he stumbles in, drunk and laughing, Harlan supporting his steps. Marta's inside, only recently hired, staring at him with surprised eyes, and he barely glances at her. He's twenty-four, and that's when Harlan decides to replace some of the knives in the wheel with fakes. He's twenty-four, and life is _great_. He's _fine_ , he's not lonely _at all_ , and it's _not_ like there is only one person in the whole world who _knows_ him.

____

He's twenty-seven, and he's Harlan's research assistant, helping him write about a case of assault. Harlan doesn't question why he knows so much about it. He's twenty-seven, and he pushed Walt down the stairs that week, _for research_. No one, including Walt, knows about it. When the news arrives that Walt broke his back _and _legs, and that recovery would take years, he barely gives it a passing thought. He's twenty-seven, and he should feel guilty about attempted murder but he really, _really _doesn't.____

_______ _ _ _

He's twenty-nine, and he's helping Harlan bring Marta into the library, vomit around her pale, trembling lips. She had to hold back all that pent-up mistruth after several turns in the game of mafia, and all that stress took a massive toll on her condition. He's twenty-nine, and he learns that he's not the only one; she can't lie, either. It should make him feel better, less alone, right? He's twenty-nine, and it doesn't matter anyway because he can't feel it.

_______ _ _ _

(Though he has to wonder. Harlan knows about his inability to lie. Harlan knows about Marta's condition. So why did he hire Marta in the first place?)

_______ _ _ _

He's thirty, and the world comes back to bite him in the ass. Blanc's pointing fingers at him. Marta's looking at him with deep, deep betrayal in her eyes. He's yanking a fake knife out of the wheel and lunging at her.

_______ _ _ _

He dreams about the library. He dreams of his memories. He dreams of the great nothing, about how it hasn't always been empty.

_______ _ _ _

And he just has to wonder:

_______ _ _ _

_Where did that five year-old boy go?_

_______ _ _ _

.

_______ _ _ _

_i couldn’t fake it if i tried ___

_________ _ _ _ _ _

.

_________ _ _ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so the thing that i noticed is that: ransom doesn't lie in the movie. at least, he doesn't say outright lies. he relies on the fact that others take the denotative meaning of his words while he himself uses a whole other connotative meaning. his lack of actually lying is what got him into trouble a couple times, anyway, and i wanted to see how far i can take that and explore the how and the why. I hope it makes sense, and that I wrote that clearly in this chapter.
> 
> next week, a longer chapter! what's blanc up to?
> 
> i've been reading comments and replying to them and it never fails to warm my heart. 1200 hits after 3 chapters? you guys are the best! let it be known that your comments and kudos are my main driving force!
> 
> ps, i still don't know french, and i just /know/ that this chapter's cutesy-foreign-language-translated-quote is wrong on so many levels. pls don't hunt me
> 
> edit: thanks to hailie down in the comments for correcting this chapter's cutesy french quote!


	5. Loop 2, 3, 4 — personne ne t'a dit que cela ferait mal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loop 2, 3, 4: Ransom has a long way to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy sunday! or not happy, tomorrow's monday and online classes suck.
> 
> here it is, a faster, longer, more intense, questionably insane chapter as i promised all y'all, have fun with it!
> 
> so i saw the positive reception to ransom's inability to lie (we need to make a better name for that), so i took it and just /ran/ with it, and of course i'm planning to make it a major plot point, no one said this story was going to be normal. i promised that we're diving into fic hell, and here we are boys.
> 
> our boy's really fucked up, isn't he?
> 
> enjoy!
> 
> and also mind the tags!

.

_personne ne t'a dit que cela ferait mal_

.

Ransom wakes up. 

The world feels cold to him.

(It’s one of those days.)

He checks his phone. December 6 2019. 

The time is 8 AM. The will reading starts at 10 AM. The drive to Harlan’s house takes about ten minutes. He usually arrives at the will reading at 9 AM to allow himself some time to hear his family tear themselves apart before the big news.

Marta should be there already, helping Blanc solve her own crime. She should be looking at the security camera footage, thinking of how she can erase it.

If he comes a little earlier, he can sneak part the officers, Marta, and his family to make sure Marta’s car won’t run. He pulled out the wires the first two times when he laughed himself out of the room, but here, now, it should be better to stick with Marta the whole way and usher her out of the premises when all hell breaks loose. 

He has to keep his act strong, especially today when he can’t muster up last night’s genuineness.

.

He arrives at 8:45 AM, blows Marta’s car engine, and parks his car outside the front door. 

The family should have arrived already. Despite his attempts to come early for the will reading, of course they’ve beaten him. He wanders into the kitchen and takes his time choosing a snack to disrespect his family with. But after five minutes opening and closing drawers and fridges, nothing looks appetising to him.

(Nothing ever does during one of these days.)

Ransom walks into the living room to find his family turn their heads towards him, eyes scrutinising his every move. They’re…quieter than he’s used to. ‘Unsettling’ would be a word that he’d use. He settles to stand by the doorway, leaning against the wall instead of trapping himself into a chair.

This is where they grill him.

Walt goes first. “Look who decided to show up.” He doesn’t look like his heart is into it, though. “First you skipped the funeral, then you arrived early for the will reading.”

Ransom gives him a levelling look, searching his eyes for a sign that Walt may be guilty and is trying to cover it up. It doesn’t last long before someone interrupts and he turns his attention to them.

“Alright, Walt, now really isn’t the time…” Joni says, looking at Walt as she gestures in a placating manner. 

“No, Joni, it’s a miracle your asshole of a nephew even decided to show up,” Walt continues, face slowly twisting. “In fact, I don’t know why you’d even bother coming today.”

A beat, and then Richard speaks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Walt looks at Ransom, akin to a lion stalking its prey. “That night at the party, we all know he hid away from everyone else. What was his excuse?”

“He’s heard whatever Harlan wanted to tell him, and he doesn’t want to listen to it again.”

“Right. Well, Jacob here talked to Dad instead-“

Ransom’s gaze snaps to Jacob, who looks up from his phone looking like a deer caught in headlights when his name was mentioned.

( _Gotcha._ )

“-and Dad wanted to tell him about an exclusion made to the will, and guess who’s getting cut out?” Walt looks a little too pleased with himself. Ransom wishes he could learn to know when to shut up. “So he knows about this. How he knows doesn’t fucking matter — what I want to know is _why you even bothered showing up_ -“

Joni interrupts. “Well, but he could’ve assumed Harlan wanted to tell him something else-“

Richard chimes in. “That is a heavy accusation that I don’t like hearing from you, Walt-“

“-I think the evidence is right there, he just wants to come and grovel and ask us to give him a cut-“

“-alright it could’ve been an honest mistake on his part-“

“-I don’t even know why you’re defending this trust fund son of a bitch-“

“-OH, now you’re calling me a _bitch_ -?“

The conversation washes over him and passes, words slipping away before he can really care. He’s getting tired of people talking about him like he isn’t there, like he isn’t a person, like he’s nothing more than a conversational topic at gatherings. One of these days he’s going to push someone else down the fucking stairs.

Walt and Richard stands and squares up, facing each other off in a pathetic catfight. Linda and Donna rush forward to hold them back. Joni’s squawking her preachy words. Meg tries to talk over her mother. Jacob looks like he’s fearing for his life.

( _He should._ )

Ransom hasn’t said a single word since he got there, and he’s already managed to start a family fight. He’s simply staring at Jacob, his eyes slightly narrowed, maybe thinking of how the switch could have taken place, maybe thinking of how he can reveal the truth to Marta who, in turn, can reveal it to Blanc, or maybe he’s thinking of how he can choke the answers out of the little shit’s throat-

Beside him, he hears a shuffle and glances over to find Marta and the three officers. When did they get there? She looks like she’d rather die in a ditch somewhere than watch the family yell at each other. Blanc looks mildly interested and wholly amused at Walt and Richard. 

Ransom looks back at Jacob, and he’s looking right at him, eyes wide, guilty, scared, and that’s the millisecond Ransom catches the little shit in his lie-

“Enough!” 

Linda’s voice cuts through the room like searing knife and Ransom barely contains his wince. His muscles tense up and he straightens his posture, attention fixed at his mother.

She turns on him. 

“Ransom, did you know?”

_No lies, boy._

( _No truths, no truths, no truths, no truths no truths no truths notruthsnotruthsnotruths-_ )

__She sees the cogs of his brain working and amends herself before he can spin a story._ _

__“That night at the party, did you hide knowing that you were getting cut out of the will?”_ _

_The direct question, boy._

__He grits his teeth, glaring at her, and the answer comes out choked. “Yes.”_ _

__“And how did you know?”_ _

_I said, no lies, boy._

__(An open question, he can still mend this-)_ _

__His mother sees this again and her lips twist. A smile, maybe, but a macabre smile she reserves only for him._ _

_Mother knows best, boy._

__“Did Harlan tell you that you were getting cut out?”_ _

__His throat feels tight, his back stiff where he presses against the wall, his fists clenched tight in his pocket as his palms begin sweating._ _

_Answer me, boy._

__“Yes,” he grits out, the answer ripped out his mouth._ _

__She cocks her head, satisfied with what he gave her, and turns away. The tension bleeds out of him and he suppresses a choke, swallowing down the tightness of his throat discreetly._ _

__._ _

( _One day he’ll kill her and they would be none the wiser. Maybe he won’t even let her have the dignity of having an honourable death. A suicide, maybe, they’ll find a noose around her neck. Or accident, they’ll find her mangled body in a mangled car and say,_ how tragic, the brakes didn’t work.) 

( _One day, they’re going to find Linda Drysdale dead by the hands of her own flesh and blood and when they bury her, he’ll be laughing down at her body._ ) 

( _One day, she’ll die, and then he’ll be free._ ) 

__._ _

__The moment all hell breaks loose, he locks eyes with Marta and says, “Run.”_ _

She nods, fearfully. The yells of the family cuts through the air as they begin crowding closer like frantic bees, and Marta stumbles towards the doorway. The officers block the exit, forming a barrier between the family and the hallway. Ransom moves to follow but Blanc’s there, too, grabbing his arm. He turns, meets bright blue eyes, _a second that he thinks Blanc might know everything_ , and the detective asks him, “Mr Drysdale, if I may ask you to stay for further questioning-“ 

__He wrenches his arm out of Blanc’s hand, moving backwards, glancing back and forth between Blanc’s all-knowing-all-seeing eyes and the family and Linda screeching at him and he shakes his head. “No,” he says. He thinks hard to remember how it felt when he gave a shit about Marta, and musters up that feeling. “I need to- next time, now I have to go make sure she’s fine-“_ _

__Ransom turns and runs, heard pounding with every word Linda screams at him. He runs outside, sees Marta pounding frantically at the buttons of her car, twisting her keys and yanking the stick. He hears the barrier of officers breaking and the family flooding through._ _

He bounds up to Marta’s window, knocking to get her attention. She looks up, and he mouths _my car, front door_ , and she understands, getting out of her car and bumping into him in a moment of panic. 

__“Marta! Marta, c’mon, I understand, I just want to talk to you-“ Joni steps out of the house, reaching out to them. His window is closing._ _

__“C’mon,” Ransom mutters, nudges her with a hand, and Marta unfreezes._ _

__“Marta, no! Don’t go with him, he’s just looking for money-!” Walt hobbles closer, waving his cane in the air. Maybe Ransom can drop him down the stairs again and he’ll shut up once and for all._ _

__“Go, run,” he hisses, and she breaks into a jog, stepping onto the grass around the house._ _

“Marta, are you listening?! That will belongs to us, we are his family, he made a mistake-!” Linda screams, her voice shrill and cutting. Some primal part of him wants to turn and listen to his mother but all of him wants to _run, now_. 

“I said run!” he says, and grabs her as he runs through the grass, around the house. Through the corner of his eyes, he glimpses Wanetta looking at them serenely, _she doesn’t know what happened_ , and the glimpse is over in a second and the thought of her disappears. 

__They make it to his car, and he slides in easily, revving up the engine as Marta sits and slams the passenger door shut. He pulls out the driveway and speeds away from the family, their noises muffled and distant._ _

He drives. Marta shakes beside him, eyes fixed on his dashboard. He glances at her as he clutches to the memory of _caring_ , feeling it fade away slowly as he grows colder and colder. 

__She looks at him, terrified. Of what, he’s not sure yet._ _

__._ _

__Ransom stops by the side of the road after ten minutes of driving._ _

__“Why’d we stop?” she asks, timid._ _

__He looks over at her. She’s curled up into herself, legs held tight to her chest, arms around them, her feet ruining his passenger seat. He briefly considers flooring it and pushing her out at 80 mph. But that would be a deterrent to his plan, and he can’t have that, not now._ _

__“Where should we go?” he asks._ _

__“I don’t know.”_ _

__“Okay,” he says, turning his eyes back on the road. “Where do you want to go?”_ _

__“I...don’t know.”_ _

__He suppresses an eye-roll. “Okay. I think we need to talk. Make some things clear between us. Is my place fine?”_ _

__In his periphery, Marta stills, glances at him tersely. “I...is that...okay with you?”_ _

__He shrugs._ _

__“Then okay. It’s fine.”_ _

__He hums an affirmative and pulls back into the road._ _

__._ _

__“Shoes off,” he tells her as they enter his house._ _

__She’s been here once, a lifetime away, asking for his help. She was scared, then. And she’s scared, now. Then, she came running to him when the first sign of trouble reared its ugly head and threatened to hurt her. Now, he’s offering his help and still, she’s scared. Of the family, of the threat of arrest, of what might happen to her mother._ _

__Maybe she’s scared of him._ _

__The thought doesn’t bother him. It won’t be a deterrent to his plans. If she’s scared of him, she’ll take his words to heart, and it’ll be easier to manipulate her. If she’s scared of him, he knows he has her under his little finger._ _

__He directs her to his couch and lets her compose herself as he retreats to the kitchen. It’s noon. He heats up some food for the both of them and brings her some water. “You must be starving,” he says, “I’m getting you some food.”_ _

__As he moves to return to the kitchen, she stops him. “Why are you helping me?”_ _

__“Who else will?” he asks. And maybe it sounds a little harsh, so he adds, “I’m supposed to care for you, y’know.”_ _

__“Really?”_ _

__He sighs. Is it that hard to believe him? “Why wouldn’t I?”_ _

__Ransom hears her shuffle in his living room as he finishes the food._ _

__“Look, I…” she begins, “I have something to tell you.”_ _

Of course, he knows exactly what she’s going to say, but it doesn’t stop him from trying to toy with her. “ _You_ as in me, or _you_ as in the family as a collective?” 

__He enters the living room holding two plates, looking at Marta expectantly._ _

__“Do I have to answer that now?” she asks weakly._ _

__“No.” He sets down the food. “Eat. You must be hungry.”_ _

__._ _

__He leans back against his couch, tilting his head back and looking at Marta down the length of his nose. All masks are gone, all bets are off. He wants answers, and he would rather have them sooner than later._ _

__“Okay,” he says, “we really need to talk. And obviously, we’re not going to get anywhere if we keep on putting this off. So. Twenty questions, Marta. You and me.”_ _

__“…What?”_ _

__Ransom rolls his eyes. “Twenty questions. You know. You ask me a question, then I ask you one-“_ _

__“No, no, I know what twenty questions is. Why would you…give me an opportunity to ask _you_ questions?”_ _

__“Because,” he says, “I have something to tell you, too.” And that’s true. If they’re going to establish a sort of trust between them, it has to be mutual. If he wants her to trust him and entrust him with her secrets, he has to offer something back, too. “And I know you want to know it, too. Your turn first, Marta.”_ _

__She looks down for a second. Submissiveness. A sign of weakness. “What was that back in the living room, with Linda?”_ _

__“Ah.” An open question, and if he really wanted, she would never find out._ _

__But here’s the problem: he wants her to know. She can’t lie, he can’t lie. He knows she can’t lie, but the reverse isn’t true, and a part of him wants to keep on milking that._ _

__The other part of him thinks she deserves to know. It isn’t fair._ _

__“I can’t lie.”_ _

__Her eyes widen._ _

“ _No_.” 

“I _just_ told you, I can’t lie.” 

“But…I’ve seen you lie. I’ve heard your lies! You’ve _lied_ to me before!” 

Ransom smiles thinly. “That, I have. I’ve lied to you before, but I never _said_ a lie. I know you can’t lie, either, Marta.” 

__She bites her lip, suddenly nervous._ _

__“We make quite a pair, don’t we?” He laughs. “Non-sequiturs, rhetorical questions, unspecified pronouns, out-of-context phrases, and of course, cut-up truths. You stitch them together, you look for open-ended questions, and you make the best out of what you have.”_ _

“But…what if you’re asked a direct question?” 

“Then you answer that and you improvise.” He stands up and takes their leftover food. From the kitchen, he says, “My turn. You vomit when you lie. Tell me how you got your condition.” 

__There’s silence for a few moments. It might be an uncomfortable topic for her to discuss — he can take note of this for later._ _

__“I’ve had it for as long as I can remember,” Marta says. “My parents thought I just had a terrible gut but we made the connection pretty early on. We thought it was a medical thing, or a psychological thing, or even a superstitious thing, but…we never found out which, or how.”_ _

__Ransom returns and looks at her, raising an eyebrow. “Why not?”_ _

__“My…dad passed, and we got overrun,” she says, her voice sad._ _

__This is the absolute worst day for Marta to be piling this pseudo-heart-to-heart bullshit on him, not when he can’t express any actual genuineness. “I’m sorry,” he says, anyway, because he has manners. Then, “Your turn.”_ _

“How did you get _your_ condition?” 

__Ransom scowls. “Look, I don’t know if you’re-“_ _

__She holds up her hands, palms facing outward, a half-surrender gesture. “Okay. Don’t answer that entirely if you’re just going to get mad at me. Did you have it since birth?”_ _

__“No.”_ _

__“When did you realise you couldn’t tell a lie?”_ _

__“Maybe when I was around twelve. I didn’t realise until then, but maybe it had been there for a while.”_ _

__Her eyebrows are drawn up in a face of sympathy, and her voice turns soft, kind, placating. As if he’s a rabid animal three seconds away from lashing out. “Does Linda have anything to do with it?”_ _

__The answer is taken right out of his mouth before he can stop it. “Yes.” At least it’s not as harsh as when Linda demands answers from him. “Out of every question, why did you go straight there?”_ _

__She shrugs. “Harlan tells me a lot about your family. I...heard some implications.”_ _

__“Pray tell, how many...implications did you hear and how much of them do you believe?”_ _

__Marta looks stricken. “Do I have to answer that?”_ _

__“No.” He smiles and crosses his legs, settling into a more comfortable position. “Playing the lie game my way, I see.” When she doesn’t respond to that with words, he continues. “My turn. The night of the party, did Harlan ask for Jacob after he couldn’t find me?”_ _

__She nods. “He wanted to find Meg, but she left already. Then he asked for Jacob.”_ _

__“Okay,” he says, “do you know what they were talking about?”_ _

__“I didn’t, when I was looking for you. But today, they said Harlan told him about your exclusion from the will, so there’s that.”_ _

__“Seems a bit weird, doesn’t it?”_ _

__“Yeah...why would Harlan tell Jacob about you, specifically?”_ _

__“I don’t know,” Ransom says, and shrugs for effect. He can see the gears turning in her head. The plot moves forward. “Your turn.”_ _

__She thinks for a second, her intense brown eyes refusing to meet his. Dimly, he thinks that it would be nicer to have her look straight at him, like that first night when they connected, and he could have gone all night simply being in her presence._ _

__“How much of those implications are true?”_ _

__“Do we really have to go back there?” he scoffs._ _

__“If that’s an uncomfortable topic for you...”_ _

__“Fine,” he says. “Anything you hear from Harlan is true. He never lies, not when it comes to me.”_ _

__“Oh.”_ _

__She shuffles her feet and looks around the room in an almost comically awkward way. Silence. Maybe Harlan told her the worst of it. Maybe she knows everything there is to know about Ransom. Maybe all she needed was that one validation from him, affirming the fact that Harlan doesn’t lie about his grandson, and now she has all the ammo she would ever need against him._ _

__“I’m sorry-“ she starts._ _

__“Don’t be, you can’t do anything about it, anyway,” he says. And he’s been growing impatient, he wants his answers validated. “C’mon. My turn. This is going to be a long one, so get comfortable.”_ _

__Ransom leans forward and squares his shoulders, forcing his gaze onto her eyes as he wipes all leftover amusement. Marta notices this, and all the ease from their conversation drains out of her, the half-smile slowly disappearing from her face. He can tell she’s getting more terrified than she ever was, and that’s good._ _

__Fear prompts the deepest truths from even the most guarded person._ _

__He knows this. And now he’s using it._ _

He’s here, and she’s here, too, in his house, his domain, his _territory_. 

__The front door is locked, the keys safe in his pocket, and she doesn’t know any other exit points._ _

__Her phone is placed carelessly on the table between them, closer to him than it is to her._ _

__Her car is all the way in Harlan’s house, and his car keys are with him, too._ _

__His house is miles away from the nearest sign of civilisation. The only things that surround him are trees and barren roads._ _

__Her eyes flit around. At his confronting posture. At her phone on the table. At the kitchen behind him and all his knives arranged in a neat display on the counter for all to see. And finally at him._ _

If he could _feel_ anything right now, he would be glad that he chose this path of coercing answers out of her. He would actually get something out of it and not legal trouble, police suspicion, or blood on his clean carpets. Unlike Harlan, he doesn’t keep _fakes_ in his collection. 

__A clear, direct, specific question she can’t find an alternate meaning in._ _

__“I know what Blanc wanted to ask you. I know your bit of the story is the most important one. What happened between you and Harlan from 11 PM to midnight on his 85th birthday?”_ _

__._ _

__Marta ends the story with a huff, eyes red and tear tracks down her cheeks._ _

__Ransom hums into his hand, looking at the floor as he thinks the story over. “You play Go, right?”_ _

__Marta’s eyebrows bunch up and her head jerks back from the strange question. Somewhere deep and hidden away, Ransom is amused at her reaction — the same one she gave him that first loop._ _

__“Yes...?”_ _

__“And you’ve never lost, not once, to Harlan?”_ _

__“I have...but that was a long time ago,” Marta says. “What- where are you going with this?”_ _

__Ransom smirks up at her. “Nowhere, not really. I know for a fact that you beat him more than I ever did, and that you're one of the best players I know. You’re going to be fine.”_ _

__That’s the truth._ _

__Marta’s phone rings and she makes a grab for it, checking the screen._ _

__“Meg?” he asks._ _

__“Yeah.” Marta answers the call and turns away. “Hello? Meg, what-“_ _

__Ransom tunes out the phone conversation, thinking. He stares at Marta, and she avoids his gaze. They’re in a game, yes, and Marta’s innocent — she’ll win. The question is: how can he get Blanc to realise that? How can he drive the investigation that way, while keeping himself away from the fire?_ _

( _Will it all even matter in the end?_ ) 

__The call goes by faster than the first time over, and Marta holds the phone away from her face, shooting Meg a quick text, then setting it face down on the table._ _

__“You okay?” he asks._ _

__“Yeah, I...it’s nothing,” Marta says._ _

__Meg should be telling the family about Marta’s mother by now. He watches as Marta looks down, dejected._ _

__“C’mon, hey,” Ransom says. “Again, you’re going to be fine. Did Blanc find anything in the investigation?”_ _

__Marta presses her palms against her thighs and taps away at her knees. “Uh, he found dried wine and mud along the length of the hallway, and the wine on the stairs, too. I...shouldn’t have drunk that night — I could’ve spilled something...”_ _

That's the one. 

__“Hey,” Ransom says, leaning forward, making sure he’s not a threatening as he was, “relax. He’s not going to arrest you.” Catch her? Yes. But arrest her? Not while he can do anything about it. “Just lay low, play along with him, let it all play out, okay?”_ _

__._ _

__The next day, things aren’t all that much better._ _

The weight of yesterday begins to set in, and more importantly, Ransom begins to _feel_ it set in. But there are things he has to do — _people_ he has to take care of, and he can’t compromise everything on sentiment or regret. 

__He wakes up early and begins to plan his route. If Jacob was the one Harlan revealed Marta’s inheritance to, then he must be the one to spark this chain of events. Either he could have switched the vials himself, or he could have had his bitch of a mother do it for him._ _

__If that’s true, then they’ve already lost. No one else knows that Marta re-switched the meds, making her innocent. So they wouldn’t have blew up the medical examiners’ office, they wouldn’t have sent Marta the letter and the email, and they wouldn’t kill Fran. All Ransom has to do is expose them. They can’t win, not anymore._ _

__Marta doesn’t come to his house because she didn’t receive a blackmail letter in the mail. They don’t find the medical examiners’ office burnt and they don’t go on a lame car chase away from the officers. He doesn’t get held and Marta doesn’t have to confess to Blanc._ _

__He comes to Harlan’s house in relatively higher spirits, knowing that by the end of today, the case will be solved, for real. And then, he would be free of the loops. He would see day 10 and never think about this whole ordeal ever again._ _

__This is it._ _

__But as soon as he steps foot inside the house, he’s confronted by the officers. Blanc’s there, of course, and he’s once again pointing fingers to Ransom._ _

__“Mr Drysdale, if we could have that ‘further questioning’ now, please,” he says, his hand against Ransom’s arm, stopping him from hiding away in a corner somewhere. “I believe this matter is quite pressing, and we must not hold it back for another ‘next time’.”_ _

__Ransom raises his eyebrows and looks around. No family. Just him and the three officers, looking at him expectantly._ _

__The thing is: he’s innocent, now. He wasn’t innocent in his first two loops but here, now, he hasn’t done anything wrong. They can’t charge him for anything because he didn’t do anything._ _

__The thing is: he wasn’t innocent in his first two loops. He may be, now, but then, he’d been the criminal. If they press the wrong buttons and the wrong things slip out of his mouth, they would have a confession in their hands._ _

__“Fine.” He raises his hands in mock surrender. “Lead the way, detective.”_ _

__._ _

__“Mr Drysdale,” Blanc starts. He takes off his jacket, sets it aside, and rolls up his sleeves. “Yesterday, I had a very interesting conversation with Wanetta Thrombey. ‘Ransom came back,’ she said. She saw you hopping down the side trellis to the house, way past the end of the party.”_ _

__Ransom taps the armchair of Harlan’s favourite chair. They’re back at square one, now, but they’re progressing. He just needs Blanc to see it all. And he needs Marta here, too, she’s a vital component to this whole story and he needs her to confirm it._ _

__“This fact clashes with your account of whereabouts, correct?” Blanc asks._ _

__“Yes,” Ransom says, because that’s the truth._ _

__“Well, at this time period, were you at home as you said in your account, or were you in the premises of Harlan’s property?”_ _

__Easy question. “I was at home,” Ransom says. “You can see me drive away before the party ended through the security feed.”_ _

__“The tape was scrambled and so we have no graphic evidence of movement to and from the house that night,” Blanc said. “And so we would have no evidence that what you say is true.”_ _

__“No evidence?” Ransom asks, and scoffs. “You don’t believe me?”_ _

Blanc leans against a table and puts his hands inside his pockets. He has a strange, almost magnanimous smile on, and he’s here, now, pointing fingers at Ransom but not _quite_ accusing him of the crime. 

__He’s never seen the detective give him such a look, he doesn’t know what to think of it._ _

__And of course, there had always been one way, and one way only, that he could have driven the investigation forward._ _

__._ _

__“My son cannot lie, detective.”_ _

__._ _

__“So,” Blanc says, crosses his arms, eyes bright and piercing, “Mr Drysdale. Is it true you cannot tell a mistruth?”_ _

__“Yes.”_ _

__“Are you aware of the fact that the side trellis of the house leads to a trick hall window which in turn, leads to the hallway outside Harlan’s bedroom and study?”_ _

__“Yes.”_ _

__“Did you climb up the side trellis after the party concluded?”_ _

__“No.”_ _

__Blanc raises an eyebrow, falling silent. Ransom can see the cogs of that eccentric brain working behind the detective’s startling eyes. They’ve always unsettled him but here, now, all he wants to do is push that beyond its boundaries. He wants to overclock this machine and heave it to the finish line._ _

__“Did you climb up the trellis last week?”_ _

Last week? 

__“...No.”_ _

__“So, do you know how Harlan Thrombey died?”_ _

__“He slit his throat.”_ _

__“Ah, but I have been saying: physical evidence can tell a clear story with a forked tongue,” Blanc says. He nods at Lieutenant Elliot’s direction. “Why did Harlan slit his throat?”_ _

__And suddenly, Ransom has an idea._ _

__“The contents of his meds were switched.”_ _

__The room falls silent. The two officers are looking at him cautiously, and when he glances at them, their hands are twitching by their sides, ready to apprehend him. Blanc, however, looks completely in his element, absorbing pieces of the story and working it out._ _

__“Do you know who did this?”_ _

__“Yes.”_ _

__“So who switched Harlan’s vials?”_ _

__“Marta.”_ _

__Silence, again. Blanc furrows his eyebrows, his gaze turning down as he scratches the back of his head. He looks back up, straight into Ransom’s eyes._ _

__“How did you know this fact?”_ _

“I’ve been doing some of my own digging,” he says. _This is his chance_. “And I think I’ve found one last bit of evidence you might find interesting.” 

__“And that evidence in question is...?”_ _

__“The official tox report.” Ransom stands up and dusts his pants. “It’s in the next room.”_ _

__He moves to leave and fetch the report, but Blanc stops him with a hand and a question._ _

__“Before we proceed to obtain this piece of evidence, I would like to clarify a few things with you.”_ _

__“Yes?”_ _

__“When Harlan couldn’t find you that night of the party, he instead opted to talk to Jacob. Is this true?”_ _

__“Yes.”_ _

__“And they were talking about your exclusion to the will?”_ _

__They weren’t, but he can’t reveal that he knows that now. “Harlan told Jacob that I won’t be in the will, yes.”_ _

__Blanc raises an eyebrow at the phrasing of his answer. But if he realises something, he doesn’t show it._ _

__“Were you aware of their topic of discussion that night of the party?”_ _

__“I was.”_ _

__“Mr Drysdale, you must know how this looks, don’t you?” Blanc asks, but he continues before the question becomes too glaring. “So I must ask you this one pressing question I believe is on all our minds. Did you, or did you not, have the intent to, and carried out the deed of killing Harlan Thrombey...?”_ _

To be fairly honest, he expected the big question to come out sooner or later. A specific question that covers a general topic. He didn’t kill his grandfather, but he also did, a lifetime away. And the _did_ ’s always outweighs the _did not_ ’s. 

__So this is it. The end of the line. He’s going to reveal the crimes he committed a lifetime away. They’re going to get his confession. He’s going to get arrested. He’ll be carted into a police car, the door’s going to slam shut, and he’s going to be propelled back to November 28th, 2019, and he’ll be subjected to this once more. He’s come so far, he can’t lose everything just like that, but that’s exactly what is going to happen as soon as he speaks._ _

__There’s no dodging the question, now. The officers are silent. The intent of the question blunt and aimed at him concisely. His throat working, his lips parting, the words yanked from the back of his throat-_ _

“... _last week_ on November 28th?” Blanc adds. 

__Ransom blinks._ _

__“No.”_ _

__And it’s true._ _

__Blanc smiles, satisfied. Ransom has never seen that smile directed at him before, and it’s jarring to see the man who once accused him of his crimes now letting him go. It’s times like these that he thinks that maybe, just maybe, Blanc can see and understand more than what is shown on the surface._ _

__“Well, thank you for the honesty, Mr Drysdale,” Blanc says. “Now, please take us to the toxicology report.”_ _

__._ _

__Ransom watches as Blanc reads over the report, fully immersed in focus and thought, working out the implications of the report’s contents._ _

__“Elliot, if you could please contact Ms Cabrera and have her come here immediately,” Blanc starts after a lengthy silence. He looks up. “Trooper Wagner, please assemble the Thrombey family, I believe we may have a prime suspect in our hands.”_ _

__He folds the report and turns to Ransom._ _

__“In the meantime, Mr Drysdale, please tell me more of your findings after ‘doing some of your own digging’.”_ _

__._ _

__Marta walks into the room, confusion and fear evident on her face. She looks around, at Ransom, at Blanc, at the two officers lounging about the library._ _

__Ransom pushes himself off the wall he’s been leaning against and grabs Marta’s arm, pulling her close as he leans in. “Marta,” he mutters, too low for the officers to hear, “do you trust me?”_ _

__She gulps._ _

__“Don’t answer that.” He drops his voice even softer. “You’re going to be fine,” he says, with as much certainty as he can push into his voice. She needs to know that it’s the truth — no matter how the rest of this day goes, he can and _will_ make sure that the right person is arrested._ _

( _He only has one shot._ ) 

__“Ms Cabrera,” Blanc starts, and Ransom lets her go. “Mr Drysdale here has told me some very interesting things about you. Things, I might add, you failed to include during our official questioning. But-“ he holds a hand up when Marta shrinks into herself, “-I believe we need to hear it straight from the source. Did you, or did you not, switch the vials of Harlan’s nightly medication?”_ _

__“I...Yes,” Marta says, stumbling over that one syllable._ _

__Blanc waits a few seconds, simply observing Marta’s face. “So if that’s the case...I believe you’re proven to be innocent.” He takes out the tox report from his pocket and unfolds it, glancing over it one last time. “Because in the official toxicology report, it says that Harlan’s bloodwork is normal. No morphine was injected into his system.”_ _

__“That’s...” Marta interjects, “that’s impossible. I switched his vials. I saw the bottles, I...”_ _

“Yes,” Blanc says, “but his bloodwork is normal. Hence we can safely assume that the contents of the vials were switched _before_ you switched them.“ 

__“But...if that’s true, then I gave Harlan the correct dosage,” Marta says, voice breaking as she grinds out every word. Her legs give out under her and she stumbles into a chair. She looks up, meets Ransom’s gaze. “So he died for nothing.”_ _

__“Not nothing, no.” Blanc approaches her and crouches down, handing her the two vials of medication, the labels taped over. “Hand me the morphine, please.”_ _

__Marta holds the vials in her shaking hands, offering one of them to Blanc after a moment._ _

__“How did you know this was the morphine?”_ _

__Marta’s whole body is shaking, now. “I just knew,” she says, sniffing._ _

__“You knew because there is a slight, almost imperceptible difference in weight and viscosity in the two liquids only someone so experienced may realise. I need you to know this, Marta,” Blanc says, “Harlan died because he wanted to protect you.” And there’s that look again, a sincere, comforting expression on the detective’s face Ransom had only seen directed at one person and one person only. “Because you are a good nurse, and you are a good friend.”_ _

Marta looks at Ransom then, and he nods, shrugging as if giving her the go-ahead. _You’re going to be fine_ , he had told her. It was the truth, then, and it's the truth, now. 

__“But,” Blanc says, standing, “we are not done, not quite yet.” He swivels around dramatically. “Trooper Wagner, please bring us our prime suspect.”_ _

__The State Trooper nods, giddiness barely concealed in his expression, and leaves the library._ _

__“A strange case from the start,” Blanc says, “two sides of the same story. The same set of events, shone in two different lights, told in two different perspectives. A coin. Two parallels that should have never met, tied together in this one impossibility.” He starts pacing. “Desperate motives, this...intriguing crime, and the identity of the people who hired me.”_ _

__“People?” Ransom asks, speaking for the first time in a while. “People — as in, plural?”_ _

“Yes,” Blanc replies. “Three days ago, I received two envelopes, both filled with cash, both containing a torn article of Harlan’s death, and both anonymous. I asked myself: _what a strange coincidence, why would there be two_? More importantly, why was I even hired on a case of suicide?” 

__Of course. The true criminal would want to frame Marta, and what better way to do that than to hire the most well-known detective in the state?_ _

__“But now as more evidence come to light, one side of the story revealed, I have to ask you this one last question, Mr Drysdale.” Blanc faces him completely, all eyes on the two of them. “Did you hire me to solve this case?”_ _

__“Yes,” Ransom says._ _

_And it’s the truth._

__“And you did so, because you couldn’t put it to rest. You suspected something was afoot, and you won’t let it go until the case, down to its last detail, is solved.” He pauses, for dramatic effect. “Then I believe we can deduce the motives of the other party.”_ _

__Jacob and Donna enter the room then, ushered in by the Trooper._ _

__“What is this?” Donna intercepts before anyone can move or say a word. She clutches her son closer. “You don’t get to manhandle us inside our own house, I want answers for my son-“_ _

__“Pardon the rough introduction, Mrs and young Mr Thrombey,” Blanc says, stepping closer to the pair. “But it’s time for us to flip the coin and search the other side. Jacob, please tell us what Harlan told you the night he died.”_ _

__Jacob looks between his mother, the officers, then Marta and Ransom with panic. “I...he-“_ _

__“Don’t answer that, Jacob.” Donna holds a hand in front of her son as if to protect him. “You, I don’t care who the fuck you officers are, but we have rights to keep silent,” she hisses, “and the investigations are over. I was under the assumption that the family was called here to receive the news that Marta had renounced the inheritance-“_ _

__“And that assumption was false,” Blanc says, simply, ignoring the fact that her face was getting redder and redder by the second. “Jacob, did Harlan tell you about Marta’s inheritance?”_ _

“No, no you don’t get to speak to my son,” Donna snaps, pushing Jacob back further behind her, “you will speak to me, or better yet, get my lawyers and speak to _them_!” 

__Blanc looks her up and down, sizing her up, and his gaze lands on her shoes and stays there. “Why, I believe I found something of note. Mrs Thrombey, may I inspect your shoes?”_ _

__“My shoes?” Donna looks borderline offended that Blanc would ever propose such a thing. “Why would you want to-“_ _

__“It’ll be just a second, Mrs Thrombey.”_ _

__Donna heaves in a breath and takes off one of her heels, handing it to Blanc. The detective turns the shoe, nodding to himself, before he flips it over and shows everyone the sole._ _

__“Dried wine.” Blanc smiles. “On this shoe. Up the stairs, along the hallway.” He turns to Donna. “You didn’t know about the trick hall window, did you? So you had to resort to the stairs. And you had to do it when nobody was looking, so you made your son argue politics instead of you.”_ _

“What the _fuck_ ,” Donna says, “it could have been her!” She points one crooked finger at Marta. “She drank that night, she was with Harlan at his time of death!” 

__“Marta, did you drink wine that day?” Blanc asks, breezily._ _

__“I...” Marta furrows her eyebrows, deep in thought. She resurfaces like a man with an epiphany. “No, I had a glass of champagne, you can ask Fran, she gave it to me-“_ _

__“Fran is gone!” Donna screeches. “We took care of her, that blackmailing little rat, you have no proof of this- you cannot possibly believe-“_ _

__“Earlier today, I was informed of an emergency call to the hospital,” Blanc says. “A housekeeper, on the brink of death from morphine overdose. In 1208 Columbus Road, an anonymous caller saw two people behaving strangely and went to investigate, and found Fran convulsing on the floor of the neighbouring building’s basement. Luckily, she was brought to the hospital in time.”_ _

__Blanc points to the rotary phone of the library._ _

__“And she has Harlan as one of her emergency contacts.”_ _

__The phone rings. No one moves to pick it up, until Marta nudges forward and takes the call. “Hello?” She looks up at them, then her gaze ends up drilled into Donna’s eyes. “Oh. Thank you, doctor, we’ll be there.”_ _

__Marta hangs up and smiles, tears in her eyes. She’s not crying from happiness, he notes, her eyes are watering from the will and effort it takes her not to vomit. “Fran’s alive,” she says._ _

__Donna’s eyes widen, and Jacob makes a hitched sound behind her._ _

__“You ‘took care’ of her,” Blanc says. “So now we have a verbal confession to attempted murder, and we can bring you in for further investigation. Thank you for the co-operation, Mrs Thrombey. Trooper Wagner, if you’d please.”_ _

__The State Trooper makes a move to grab Donna’s arm, but she wrenches it out of his grip, fuming. She turns on Marta, eyes bulging by how wide they are, virtually frothing at the mouth._ _

__Ransom knows how this is going to end, he inches closer to the knife wheel, idly wondering if in the first loop, he looked as rabid as Donna does when confronting Marta._ _

“You little bitch,” Donna hisses lowly, “you _dirty little anchor baby_ , you will not get away with this. You have no real evidence of the crime, you have _nothing_ against us. I swear by my life that I will come back, and I will take back what is rightfully ours, our money, our company, our ancestral family home-“ 

____Ransom barks out a laugh. He can’t help it. The irony, the coincidence is too much, or maybe it’s fate he doesn’t believe in that led him to this very moment. “This house was bought in the eighties from a Pakistani guy,” he says, and laughs some more. “You stupid bitch, you’ve lost already-“_ _ _ _

“Shut up, you fucking traitor,” she spits at him, “this is your family, and you’re betraying us for the alien?” She swivels around and steps towards Marta. “I’m going to get out before you know it, my lawyers will make sure of it, I killed Fran, but she’s alive, and what do you have, then?! Attempted murder?” She laughs, desperate now. “That is nothing-!” 

Marta heaves and throws up on her face. Ransom laughs again. Blanc feigns mock surprise at the turn of events. At the other side of the room, Jacob looks horrified. 

____Marta drops to the ground, the effort of holding it back draining her energy. She coughs a few times, and gets up on wobbly feet. “I lied; Fran’s dead.” She wipes her mouth with a hand. “And you just confessed to her murder.”_ _ _ _

Donna screeches — melodramatic bitch — and lunges for the knife wheel. Jacob screams for his mother to stop, _at least he has some sense of humanity_. But Ransom’s there, he knows how this ends, and he can’t be sure that she’ll reach for a fake knife. 

______He tackles her body away, pinning her against the nearest wall. He’s great at intimidating people, including his own family, and Donna takes after her husband in the sense that she has no backbone to fend for herself._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Try anything, bitch, and I will kill you where you stand,” he says lowly, looming at her. He smiles in satisfaction when she gulps and nods, afraid. Then, louder, he says, “Eat shit, Donna.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______._ _ _ _ _ _

______“I spoke in the library about the coin,” Blanc says, pulling a silver dollar out of his pocket and turning it between his fingers. “The same, but opposite.” He looks between Marta and Ransom seated beside each other. “Two parallel lines that will never meet.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______He stands up, and tosses the coin to Marta. She catches it after some fumbling._ _ _ _ _ _

______“And yet, here we are." Blanc nods at them in farewell. "Mr Drysdale. Ms Cabrera."_ _ _ _ _ _

______He leaves, and Marta looks at Ransom, the coin in her hand._ _ _ _ _ _

______There is no fear in her eyes._ _ _ _ _ _

______._ _ _ _ _ _

_So close, you’re so close, c'mon Ransom, you're almost there._

He's ten, and there's a hand on his shoulder. One of the few memories of his family he treasures. One of the only people he trusts. There's a large body beside his, holding his arms so he doesn't fall. He does, anyway, and his uncle catches him before he hits the ground. 

_You can do it. Last try, I feel it, you're going to get it this time._

______._ _ _ _ _ _

______“He’s so young,” Marta mutters beside him, the doors to the balcony behind her. Outside, there’s yelling, the family shocked to find the real perpetrators behind Harlan’s death._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Sorry?” Ransom asks._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Jacob,” she says, as if that’ll explain anything._ _ _ _ _ _

______Ransom nods, anyway. “He’s turning seventeen this year.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“He doesn’t deserve to have his life broken because of what Harlan wanted for us,” she says, hugging herself. “No one should have the burden of murder weigh them down for the rest of their lives.” She turns towards the balcony, ready to step out and assess the situation. Ready to look at the family down the length of her nose, tell them that she won._ _ _ _ _ _

______Marta glances back at him._ _ _ _ _ _

______“C’mon,” she nudges. She opens the door, a clear invitation._ _ _ _ _ _

______(But no one deserves the burden of murder. No one should have done it in the first place. Harlan didn’t have to die.)_ _ _ _ _ _

( _You’re not done yet._ ) 

______“Go ahead,” Ransom says. “I’m right behind you.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Marta nods._ _ _ _ _ _

______She moves forward, and he stays where he is._ _ _ _ _ _

______._ _ _ _ _ _

______Ransom wakes up on November 28th for the fourth time. He looks out the window, at the sunlight and the sky, listens to the sounds of life, of the birds and the machinations of his house._ _ _ _ _ _

______He steps out of bed, checks the time (7 AM), and gets ready to come to Harlan’s birthday early._ _ _ _ _ _

______He has to be there, has to talk to his grandfather, has to make sure that he’s the only one who knows about Marta’s inheritance. That way, he can make sure he’s the only one with a possible motive to kill Harlan._ _ _ _ _ _

______But tonight, he’ll drive home and stay there._ _ _ _ _ _

______No one dies today._ _ _ _ _ _

______._ _ _ _ _ _

______“I’m cutting you out of the will,” Harlan tells him._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Okay,” Ransom says._ _ _ _ _ _

______Silence._ _ _ _ _ _

______“You…don’t have a problem with it?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______He shrugs. “It’s been a long time coming. I’ve been expecting you to do it for weeks.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Well. I’m giving it all to Marta.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Okay.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“You don’t have a problem with it either?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“No.” He shakes his head. “She deserves it.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______._ _ _ _ _ _

______He’s at home, counting down the seconds until midnight. Watching the clock on his wall intently, the ticking sound a form of catharsis for his pent-up tension._ _ _ _ _ _

______At 11:59, Ransom holds his breath, ready to see it all be over._ _ _ _ _ _

______At midnight, the world turns._ _ _ _ _ _

______._ _ _ _ _ _

_No one deserves to have the burden of murder on them._

_But you did this to yourself. You reap what you sow. You get this, and only this._

_Harlan has to die._

______._ _ _ _ _ _

______He wakes up on November 28th for the fifth time._ _ _ _ _ _

______._ _ _ _ _ _

_no one told you this is going to hurt._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh we are not done, not by a long shot.
> 
> parallelism! symbolism! metaphors?
> 
> i hope my blanc writing isn't too terrible — i can /never/ emulate my lord rian johnson's blanc dialogue, he's too powerful, us mortals can only do so much. oh also the murder mystery: i wasn't really writing a mystery, i wanted to put a bigger emphasis on ransom's desire to be free of the time loop by solving the case, so i hope i conveyed that enough. 
> 
> please feel free to give some advice/constructive criticism, i'm 100% open to it. and if anyone wants to yell about the writing/themes/characters of the movie or literally anything else in the comments i'll come yell with you i had such a great time interacting with y'all oh my god
> 
> sneaky weekly reminder that comments and kudos feed my hungry writer brain thank u
> 
> edit: thanks to hailie for correcting the french quotes in this chapter!


	6. Loop 4-14 — garder les pieds sur terre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loop 4-14: Ransom tries and it's not enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *banging pots and pans* time travel! get your weekly dose of time travel fic here!
> 
> hello hi yes we are diving into the meat of the story aka time travel shenanigans, a person going insane, murder, and sneeaaky foreshadowing.
> 
> this chapter is a lot faster, a lot choppier, and a lot more confusing than the last ones. you can see how fast it is just from the number of loops i put in this chapter's title. so, absolutely don't take everything at face value, assume most of everything is a metaphor, and enjoy our boy getting increasingly stressed. 
> 
> mind the tags!
> 
> disclaimer: i don't know how go works

.

_garder les pieds sur terre_

.

One rule.

No one else gets blood on their hands. He has to be the only one to know about Marta's inheritance.

He arrives at Harlan's house in the afternoon, seeking out Harlan immediately. Harlan tells him that he's getting cut out of the will, that Marta's inheriting all of it, and Ransom nods and leaves.

Maybe it's a proximity thing. Maybe if he moves a far enough distance before midnight, he'll escape the loops. It's worth a try, right? And if he fails, it won't matter anyway because he'll get another try, another chance to change his methods. _Something has to work_ , right? A combination of the correct actions performed at the correct order at the correct time. He just has to find out _what_ , _how_ , and _when_.

So once he's out of his grandfather's house, he gets in his car and he drives away, making it all the way to the edge of the city before he settles there and waits.

.

At midnight, the world turns.

.

Ransom wakes up on November 28th for the sixth time.

Further, then. Maybe he has to get out of the city, drive until he can't go any further. Maybe he'll stop a few hours before midnight, see how far he's gone and perform his own little experiment to see what works and what doesn't.

He arrives at Harlan's house, talks to Harlan, and leaves. He gets in his car, drives off, and doesn't stop until he's hours away from the city.

He checks the clock. 10 pm, that _should_ be enough, right?

He parks by the side of the road, gets out of the car and sits by its hood, waiting.

.

At midnight, the world turns.

.

Ransom wakes up on November 28th for the seventh time.

 _Further_ , he thinks desperately, scrambling out of bed to get his day started as soon as he can, _and faster_. He rushes to Harlan's house, gets the conversation over with in five minutes, and books it the hell out of there. He pulls out of the driveway and stomps on his gas pedal, his car speeding down the empty road. He enters the city five minutes faster and leaves it ten minutes sooner.

Buildings fly by and people turn into blurs, but the clock keeps ticking, time keeps running out, and he can only go so far before midnight catches up with him.

He _has_ to try. And if he fails, it won't matter anyway because he can try again.

At 11.58 pm, he pulls into a gas station, getting out of his car to watch the seconds count down in his phone.

Is it enough? He's gone hundreds and hundreds of miles away from home. _Is it enough_?

.

No.

At midnight, the world turns.

.

Ransom wakes up on November 28th for the eighth time.

There has to be a way — there's something he's doing wrong, something he can change to move faster, drive further, beat the proximity effect — and he has to try until he can't bear it anymore.

(Some people say insanity is trying the same thing over and over snd expecting different results.)

( _Well he crossed that line a few weeks ago when the universe decided to pull this vicious trick on him, didn't he?_ )

He's faster, now. Arrives at Harlan's house earlier, finishes the conversation quicker, leaves by a considerable margin earlier. He drives, and he drives, and he drives, and everything passes by in a blur. Either it's all going to be over in a matter of hours, or he's going to fail and get another chance, it _doesn't matter_.

He's driving when the clock strikes midnight.

.

The world turns.

.

Ransom wakes up on November 28th for the ninth time.

He gasps for breath, hands flying up to hold his ribcage area. His chest feels like it's caved in, pressed so deeply that he can't feel anything but the need to breathe.

But he can't waste those precious few seconds collecting himself, he has to move, he has to change his strategy, keep going, keep trying, it won't matter in a few hours anyway-

He skips Harlan's house, instead opting to floor it from the get-go. Roads fly by and hours follow, and the sun begins to set before he knows it. He should be cities away now, but he can't be too sure — he has to keep moving.

His phone rings. It's Harlan.

He glances over and moves to pick it up.

His foot still on the gas, his hand slipping from the wheel-

"Hello?"

"Ransom-"

A screech, and everything freezes in a moment of pure fear when he looks up, lights headed directly towards his car.

.

" _Ransom_!" is the last thing he hears.

.

( _He read an article, a few months ago, about brain activity found in bodies post mortem._

_The heart stops beating, all vital signs cease, and clinical death is declared. However, the brain continues functioning for a few more minutes. On average, seven, and at most, ten._

_Some people believe this seven minutes is the infamous 'life flashing before your eyes', when the person relives a sped-up version of their entire life in that seven-minute time frame._ )

.

Well, he wants to tell them they're wrong, because that's not what happens at all.

His car crumples, his body with it, he feels agonizing pain strike through him, and then he wakes up on November 28th for the tenth time.

.

Dying is absolutely unlike how anyone theorizes it would be.

Well.

Ransom knows at least _half_ of what it feels like. He knows the painful, fearful half that greeted him following a second of carelessness. But not the dark, unknown half. No, he was pulled back into life without a single scratch on him.

He died, and it didn't matter. He has another chance.

He sits in his shower for far too long, letting steaming hot water drench him from head to toe. Trembling, burying his head between his knees, hugging himself as if it would give him any sort of comfort or protection, seeing lights in his mind's eye, feeling the ghost of metal burying into his neck.

He can't run. It's obvious — maybe it's always been obvious and he just didn't want to see it — and it's time to face that fact.

 _Then stay_ , the tug whispers, sparking to life once more, more of an entity than a product of his mind. More of a second presence than an echo of his thoughts. More present, more _real_ , the only thing he has in a world that left him behind weeks ago. The only constant in this new world he's thrust into.

(What would day 10 look like?)

(He never even got to see the end of day 9.)

(He would be carted off in the police car and held by the police. His trial would happen in a few days — money can't buy time but what it _can_ do is push his case to top priority. His lawyers would lose after all the evidence presented against him, and he'll be locked up for life.

His family would endlessly hound Marta for money. Linda would find out about her husband's affair, and she'd immediately file for divorce against him. Walt would grovel at Marta's feet and beg her to take him back into the company. Joni would slander Marta into oblivion in social media and then she'd find a sugar daddy to leech off of.

And Marta...god. She'd grief for Harlan, because she didn't have time to really grief, what with the investigations taking up a huge portion of her time. Then she'd grief for her old life, because now she's propelled into the upper class and she has to fend for herself in a way she never had to. Then she'd collect herself and fight the wolves at her door. She'll change. She wouldn't come to his trial, but she would be willing to pay millions to hire the best lawyers that would make sure he would never get out of prison. If she never saw him again, it would still be too soon.

There are no happy endings here)

(But it's so much better than this.)

So he stays, because making it to a broken day 10 sounds a hell lot more attractice than the prospect of spending another minute in the loop. And even it he fails, it won't matter. He has all the chances he'll ever need.

.

Ransom comes to Harlan's party and the first person to greet him is Walt.

"Look who's decided to turn up," Walt sneers.

"Shut the fuck up," Ransom snaps back, brushing past his uncle without another glance back. He doesn't care enough to see how Walt reacts — he has one job tonight and that job is to make it to tomorrow.

.

"I'm cutting you out of the will," Harlan tells him, a somber expression on his face.

Ransom shrugs. "Sure. Why the fuck not."

.

He _stays_.

.

He doesn't leave Harlan's house, because if he goes even a step out the door, he's not sure he'll want to turn back at all.

He hangs by the kitchen, eats as many snacks as his heart wants — the calories won't matter, anyway — and tries to stay the hell away from his family. He _really_ doesn't want to bother with them; if they talk to him or look at him, if one of them even _breathes_ in his remote direction...there's no telling how creative he can get in finding ways to kill them. Or at least maim them half to death.

He leaves the kitchen at 11.30, right as the party ends, and climbs the stairs to Harlan's office. The family should be heading to bed, and Marta should be taking Harlan up for his meds. He reaches the topmost floor and opens the door to the study to find Harlan and Marta there, assembling a Go board.

Harlan notices him over Marta's head. "Ransom," he says, "I'm surprised you haven't left yet."

Marta turns, eyes wide when she looks at him. She doesn't trust him. Not now, not in the last loop, not ever.

"I was hoping to stay and speak to you for a while after the party," Ransom says. He enters the room before Harlan invites him in and closes the door behind him.

"If you're here to talk about...what we talked about, I'm going to tell you now: you won't be achieving anything," Harlan warns him, berating him with his pointer finger. "My mind's made up."

Ransom shakes his head. "No, no. I...no, I don't want to talk about that. I get it. It's fine." At Harlan's unconvinced look, he adds, "Really."

"So what _do_ you want to talk about?

_I killed you, lifetimes away. Twice. Then I didn't, but you still died. And now I don't want to see you dead but I can't move on otherwise._

(I've been repeating the same nine days. I came close three times and yet, _and yet_ , I must be doing something wrong because here I am, at the beginning of another loop.)

( _I died, yesterday, and today I'm alive. It didn't matter, it doesn't matter, everything I do gets turned back and I don't why or how this is happening to be but it is and I can't escape._ )

"I don't know," he says. He walks over and sits himself down on the nearest empty chair beside the table.

Harlan looks at him, the gears in his brain croaking to life. "Okay, then," he waves a hand over the board, "I want to see a game between you and Marta. Can you two do that for me?" He looks between the two of them, a small, crooked smile turning up the corner of his lips.

"What?" Marta says. It sounds more like a slip of the tongue than a true question.

"Why not? Two of the best players I've had the privilege of playing against," Harlan says, "not that it says much about you, don't get your egos boosted — I've only ever played against two people my whole life. But yes-" he nods at them, "Ransom, you've played against me and won more than half the time. Marta, you've lost a grand total of 3 games against me. I'd like to see how you fare against each other."

.

They both reach for the black stones, much to Harlan's amusement. The old bastard always chose white.

.

She wins, the first game. But it's fine, he doesn't anticipate most of her moves and isn't familiar with how she uses her playing style to beat him. At points, it feels like she's playing alone and he's at her periphery, his pieces inconsequential to whatever she's building with hers.

He didn't know how to navigate her, and he loses.

.

She wins, the second game. She hasn't spoken to him the entire time they've been playing and he doesn't really blame her. He doesn't make the effort to talk, either. He's creeping into her senses — he can tell she's getting bothered by his pieces. She doesn't fight back, and instead adapts to him and turns the game back to where she wants it to go.

He learns, and it's not quite enough.

.

It's a tie, the third game. But only barely — the game was favoured towards her until the last moves, where Ransom snatches power back to his side and balances them out. Except...he felt like she allowed that to happen. Like she could've won easily if she really wanted to, but she didn't. What she wanted was a tie.

And it was a tie she got.

.

It doesn't matter, at the end.

Midnight comes and takes him away.

.

( _Some people think that at the very end of those seven minutes — at the end of the person's life flashing before their very eyes — the person relives their life again, in that fraction of a pocket in time. Seven minutes within that seven minutes._

 _And the process repeats. The mind replays the life over and over, in smaller and smaller fractions. A pre-set story, no going off the beaten path. Nowhere to go, no end in sight._ )

.

He's given a chance to dream in between the loops.

He's eight, and he's playing in the field outside his uncle's house when he spots a bird beneath a tree, its wings bent at an awkward angle and its neck twisted to the side. He stops, crouches down, and pokes it with a stick, turning it over and examining its open, frightened eyes.

He hears the crunch of leaves behind him.

"Hey, kiddo," his uncle walks over, Meg sleeping in his arms. "What'd you find over there?"

"It's a bird," Ransom replies, looking up at his uncle. He watches as a look of grim realisation sets in his uncle's expression.

"That, it is."

"It's dead, isn't it?" he asks.

"Oh, Ransom..." his uncle says. "Yeah. It's dead. I'm really sorry you had to see that." He offers a hand to Ransom, and he takes it, standing up.

Ransom looks back at the bird. "Why did it happen?"

"I don't know."

"Did it really have to die?" Ransom asks.

"No," his uncle replies. "But that's how it is. It happened, and you can't turn it back alive." He smiles sadly, crinkles at the corner of his eyes. "C'mon. We'll bury it later."

Ransom nods. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Linda comes, later, and he never gets the chance to bury the bird.

.

Ransom wakes up on November 28th for the eleventh time.

He sits up in bed, wipes his wet cheeks with the palm of his hand, and gets out of bed. It's getting harder to remember Neil's face nowadays.

Things die, yes, and he can't reverse it, yes. What he can do is move forward. Or _try_ to; his current predicament doesn't really allow any free rein over his fate.

He stays, and he knows what he has to do.

.

There are some things that can break a man's soul. Some despicable actions, like taking a life, that you cannot go back from. Your hands will forever be red in your eyes and the door to that possibility will always be open. You will always look at a problem and have a deep, dark part of yourself that whispers, _you killed once, you can do it again._

He was trained against this from a young age. Not to preserve his soul, no, but to lose the desire to look back and regret it. You can't survive the corporate world with a gentle nature, after all.

So this is why it's easy for Ransom when he steels himself, lets his interfering emotions freeze over into the great nothing, and kills Harlan that night.

He lets Marta finish her job and take Harlan to bed before he takes the _real_ knife propped in Harlan's study, sneaks into the bedroom cloaked in darkness, and slits Harlan's throat, careful not to let blood onto his clothes.

The morphine in Harlan's veins should keep him asleep, and Ransom waits for the splatter of blood to turn into a trickle before he wraps Harlan's fingers around the knife and sneaks down the trellis and into the night.

.

 _Most likely a suicide_ , the police say, when they arrive on day 2. _Possible homicide, but more evidence has to be collected and more investigations have to be conducted to rule it as a possibility._

 _Tragic_ , Ransom says, feigning grief, _I never knew he would ever do something like this. I guess none of us knew him very well._

.

No one gets arrested. The will goes to Marta. A happy ending, right?

.

Ransom wakes up on November 28th for the twelfth time.

He smothers Harlan in his sleep and climbs down the side trellis and away into the woods. The dogs bark at him but he's already out by the time someone wakes up.

.

 _Most likely asphyxia, the morphine may have depressed his respiratory system and closed off his airway_ , the police say. _We have an account of someone being woken up by the dogs barking, though. But the other residents of the house claim the dogs were barking at a small animal and investigations will not proceed unless the family wishes it._

 _Oh, no, that's terrible,_ Ransom says, _I can't imagine who would do such a thing. No one would have reason to do that, Harlan has been so good to us all our lives._

.

The family refuses the investigation. No one gets arrested, the will goes to Marta, and it's also a happy ending.

.

Ransom wakes up on November 28th for the thirteenth time.

He comes into Harlan's bedroom as the man's fast asleep, fills a syringe full of morphine, and plunges it into Harlan's neck.

He leaves as Harlan's eyes flutter open and he starts spluttering. Their eyes meet for a second, a void between them.

Later, he comes back and places the syringe in Harlan's hand. Part of the trellis breaks when he climbs down.

.

 _A suicide at first glance, but we have evidence that might suggest otherwise_ , the police say, _investigations will be conducted, we have reason to believe that this was a case of homicide._

.

Ransom tries to leave when the news arrives. He gets in his car and drives as far as the edge of the city when his hands steer around to pull over and his foot slams down on the brakes, jerking him forward in his seat.

 _Stay_ , the tug tells him, roots him in place, chaining him down when all he wants to do is run. A hand around his arm, large palms and kind eyes, a voice urging him back.

He gets out of the car and looks out into the road out the city. The crime behind him, calling him back to face his deeds. The prospect of running, a wish to step forward and be free, that hope a million miles away, out of the loop and out of his reach. If he takes even a step forward, he'll just be pulled back into day 1.

He's trapped, here. Until he does the right things, in the right order, in the right way, he can't leave.

Ransom turns back. He's not done here, not yet.

.

At the end, they rule Harlan's death as a suicide. _Too many unknown variables_ , they said, _and all the members of the family have solid alibis._

No one gets arrested. The will goes to Marta. A happy ending.

It didn't matter, at the end. Nothing did.

He wakes up on November 28th for the fourteenth time and all of it is reset.

.

( _The mind's reality frays at the edges, cut down into an infinitely-decreasing fraction._

_The person, teetering on the very edge of life, inching closer and closer but still hanging on to those little replays of their life._

_Seven minutes, within seven minutes, within seven minutes, within seven minutes, within seven minutes, within seven minutes, within seven minutes-_

_Until time catches up, the seven minutes are over, and the person plunges off the cliff, swallowed whole by death. Time catches up, and the world keeps turning._ )

.

The world keeps turning.

.

_keep your feet on the ground._

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we all love some denial and desperation woo
> 
> don't drive while distracted, pepo
> 
> ngl i'm not very confident in this chapter cus the little parts are way too short. but here it is, it's where i want the story to go next, and i wanted to set an earlier precedent for the story going forward. a little transition in terms of tone, i guess. 
> 
> next chapter, we're closing down act 1 if my estimations are correct. 
> 
> ik this chapter might be a little confusing, so please share your thoughts/questions/theories down below. suggestions or criticism are also welcome, i love seeing what people think of this story!
> 
> kudos and comments make my day and feed my ape writer brain!


	7. Loop 20/21??? — tu n'es pas celui que tu penses être

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loop 20/21???: Ransom breaks free, but not from the loop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well. welcome to the end of act 1. we're wrapping some things up and leaving the important bits loose. 
> 
> keep your seatbelts fastened, your limbs in the ride, and enjoy the chapter!

.

_tu n'es pas celui que tu penses être_

.

Here's the thing about time loops.

Ransom knows _exactly_ what will happen. He knows what happens when he does the right things. He knows what people say when he pushes the right buttons. He knows what events will occur, when, and in what order. It's a neat little branch of events he keeps stuffed in his head.

If he kills Harlan and frames Marta for it, either one of two things can happen depending on whether he brings Blanc into it. If he does, he gets arrested. If he doesn't, she gets arrested. Either way, he'll be pulled back to November 28th to retrace his steps.

If he doesn't kill Harlan, either one of two things can happen depending on whether Harlan tells him about Marta'a inheritance. If he does, then he won't make it past day 1. If he doesn't, someone else would kill Harlan and they would be arrested. Either way, Ransom goes back to November 28th.

It's clear what the universe is yelling into his face: both branches are closed. Harlan has to die, it has to be Ransom who does the deed, and Marta can't be forced to take part in it. That leaves one option.

If he kills Harlan and doesn't frame Marta...well.

That's the flip side of time loops.

He doesn't know _exactly_ what will happen. There are countless branches, countless ways he can fix his problems, each path leading to another intersection, and each intersection breaking off into countless paths. From the biggest changes — like how he kills Harlan — to the most minuscule ones — like whether he decides to blink at any given moment — it all can build up to change the overall course of events.

The Butterfly effect, they call it. The tiniest flap of a butterfly's wings can trigger a domino collapse that leads to a hurricane on the other side of the world. An absolute overused cliché, but it fits, doesn't it?

Here's an absolutely hypothetical scenario.

Say that he wakes up on November 28th for the...20th time, was it? Or was it 21st? He might've lost count, why does it even matter at this point?

So he gets out of bed, he showers and throws on some comfortable clothes, the usual. He leaves for Harlan's house in the evening and takes his time dragging out the talk about Marta's will. He shrugs it off like usual and hangs around the house absolutely avoiding everyone else.

When the party ends, he helps Marta take Harlan upstairs and plays three games of Go with her, all of which he loses by a big margin. Harlan makes some offhand comment he can't be bothered to remember, and he leaves.

He waits until after midnight when he knows that Marta's gone and Harlan's asleep, and he sneaks into Harlan's office to take his knife and into Harlan's bedroom where he slits the man's throat. He gets some blood on him — whatever, he'll wash it out — and doesn't stick around long enough to watch Harlan die.

He breaks a piece of the trellis, the dogs bark and growl at him, and he escapes easily.

The next day, Ransom skips the funeral like he always does and gives his alibi and whereabouts to the police. Marta looks terrified of everyone, jumping at even the smallest breath at her general direction. The family is wary and not as chatty as they usually are.

The police suspect homicide and begin investigations.

On day 7, he arrives to the house to find none other than detective Blanc heading the interrogations. That's weird, because he didn't hire the man and yet he still showed up.

He breezes through the interrogation like it's nothing and leaves, returning the next day for the will. He laughs himself out of the house and takes Marta to the restaurant to talk. She looks at him with fear in her wide eyes but tells him a whole lot of nothing, babbling about Harlan and the will and driving him around in circles.

On day 9, he's told to come to the house for an announcement and arrives to find police cars in the driveway. He's pulled into the library the moment he steps foot outside his car. Blanc is there, pointing fingers at him. His two lackeys are there, blocking off the exit. And Marta is there, too, and she's horrified when Blanc reveals that Ransom's the killer.

Ransom turns on Blanc and asks what evidence there is to prove that fact. Blanc starts down a list, things he missed. He's gotten too careless, too dismissive of the little details and intricacies of pulling off a crime like that. The trellis, the dogs, his footprints, his alibi, his suspicious behaviour.

 _Mostly circumstantial evidence_ , he says. _Nothing solid._

 _Yes_ , Blanc says, _but that's not all. Marta, if you'd please._

Ransom turns on Marta, eyeing her down as she steps back from the heat in his eyes. She tells them about being taken to the restaurant, about sitting across him and looking into his eyes, about how that short moment of guarded intimacy revealed so much to her. About how when she looked closely at his camel coat, she made out a spot of dried blood on his sleeve.

 _A week_ , she says, _blood changes in colour daily in that time frame._

The detective orders him to take off his coat and reveals that same spot of blood. Marta affirms that she can tell approximatey how old dried blood is. Blanc calls her a good nurse. He turns on Ransom, and says that he spoke to Linda about her son and she said some very interesting things.

He asks, _did you kill Harlan Thrombey on November 28th_?

Ransom glares around the room. At the officers, at Blanc, and then his gaze sets on Marta. _Yes_ , he says. And it's the truth.

In this not-quite-so hypothetical situation, he loses.

.

A culmination of oversights and dismissiveness. Carelessness, overconfidence, constant underestimation of the machinations around him.

The beat of a butterfly's wing that starts from the very beginning. The hurricane that ends it all. For all the hindsight that the loop has granted him, he still misses the little things that eventually stack up and lead to his downfall, his loss. It was supposed to be perfect, _he's_ supposed to be perfect — _he was made to be_ — and yet, _and yet_ -

.

He turns on Marta, fire burning deep within his belly and scorching up to his throat. He spits out whatever venom he can muster in a voice so acidic that she flinches away. " _You're dead_ ," he hisses.

(It's her, she did this, she was the one to put it all together, she told them about the blood, it's Marta, she's the reason they even suspected him in the first place and she's the reason they're going to arrest him-)

( _And he's going to kill her for that._ )

Marta takes a step back, terrified of what she's seeing in his expression. She's there, in front of him, both standing by the knife wheel, and he's there, too, towering over her small frame and glaring down at her. Mouth twisted in a snarl, hands itching to squeeze her throat, shoulders shaking from all the fury that culminated up to this very moment.

He's so close, again.

( _She always brings him to the very edge, for good or otherwise. She was the one to bring him so close to freedom, and now she's the one to bring him so close to snapping._ )

He glances to the knife wheel and pinpoints exactly which knives are fake and which are real. He's so close, and yet something's pulling him back, restraining him from making that last step forward. A tug in his navel yanking him back, hands around his arms holding him, a familiar stranger's voice whispering in his ear, telling him _you don't want to do this, you don't have to do this, there are better ways and you have to trust me-_

Time slows down as it never does for him. All his days have been a never-ending barrage of urgency, events rushing past and collapsing onto one another, time running out again and again, memories blurring together and shaping themselves into his broken foundation.

_You don't have to be the man you keep telling yourself you have to be, there's more to you than just this, you know you never wanted this, you know you never deserved this-_

People freezing in place. The officers realising what's about to transpire. Blanc's eyes widening. Marta, mouth opening to form a gasp. That minuscule fraction of a second, stretched out to accomodate this war within himself. Ironic that the only time he's allowed to breathe is when he doesn't need to, he's already made up his mind and he's going to do it if only the tug would _let me go-_

_You said it yourself: you would never want to see her die. What happened to that, why do you want to kill her now, where's the boy that wanted to bury a dead bird-_

( _That person is_ gone, _and all that's left is what the world moulded in my place_.)

He's five, and he's running out of time. He wants to be a child and his parents don't even love him enough to let him be-

He's nine, and he's running out of time. He wants a friend and he never found any real ones-

He's twelve, and he's running out of time. He wants to be safe but he doesn't know how to feel that way when he's always so scared-

He's fifteen, and he's running out of time. He wants to be happy and he's denied that right when Neil decides to go and _slit his own fucking throat_ -

He's eighteen, and he's running out of time. He wants to be his own person but he's stuck with the same people in the same family that he hates so much-

He's twenty-four, and he's running out of time. He wants to leave and he doesn't _want_ to be helped, he doesn't _want_ to be saved, he _doesn't care_ -

He's twenty-seven, and he's running out of time. He wants to breathe and if he has to push Walt down the fucking stairs to get some air then so be it-

He's twenty-nine, and time's run out. It's too late. He wants to feel and one day he just stops.

He's thirty, and he has all the time in the world and yet never enough time. He wants to live.

( _I've always wanted to be free and you took that away from me, you're taking that away from me and now when I want to breathe you're telling me no_ -)

_This isn't how it's supposed to go, this isn't who you're supposed to be, we tried to help you, I tried to help you so please please please don't throw all of this away-_

( _I don't care how it's supposed to happen-_ )

_You are not who you think you are-_

He snaps.

( _If you would just STOP CONTROLLING ME-!_ )

With what can be described as the biggest amount of effort he's ever given in his entire life, Ransom breaks free of his better self.

Time resumes its course. He yanks a _real_ knife from the wheel and lunges forward, the blade aimed directly at Marta's neck. She can barely react as he swipes it across her jugular vein. What starts as a scream in her throat devolves into a strangled, choking sound as her hands reach up to hold her neck, her blood a crimson arc through the air. He falls on her, burying the knife into her chest for good measure. There's a beat of resistance, but the knife slides in easily and they both land with a thud of finality.

She chokes, again, eyes snapping into his with uttermost betrayal etched deep in her pupils. He stares back, his face inches from hers, tasting her blood in the air that he breathes in.

(Once, a lifetime away, he knew her and he wanted her to know him. He'd looked into her eyes and saw a soul that beat so pure and bright, a life that threw itself in the middle of a pack of wolves, and he'd thought that there was nothing he wouldn't give to ensure its safety.)

(How time has passed in the span of nine days, stretched into thousands of hours he's forced to endure and a million miles away from that first lifetime of missteps. He's a million miles away from the Marta that extended a hand to him and asked him to join her to the future. He's a million miles away from the Ransom that would have taken that hand.)

The light dies out from her eyes and there are people above him, arms yanking him away to slam him against the nearest desk.

He doesn't realise he's laughing until they cuff him and yell at each other or at him. He doesn't notice. The deed is done. Marta's dead.

A sight he never thought he'd see.

( _A sight he never thought he'd get to see._ )

.

The world blurs as he thought it would, and time rushes past him with his eyes wide open.

He sees colours, and people, and names in his ears he can't quite catch. Everything blurring together, blending faster and faster in one ruthless whirlwind that threatens to spit him out and leave him in the dust. He wants out, yes, but he's bound to these nine days, forever cursed to repeat the same things until he meets some unknown quota. Until the universe is pleased with him or it grows tired of toying with him or it pities him and lets him die.

He did this to himself.

He threw himself into this pit he can't escape from. The same nine fucking days over and over again. If only that damn phrase would stop bouncing around his head...

But at the same time: he's free from only thing holding him back from doing whatever the fuck he wants. Anything he does will be reset in nine days.

No repercussions.

No consequences.

No fallout.

No aftermath.

Nothing.

He's given this sandbox of things he can play with. Destroy, if he wants to. And it all would be reverted.

He can do whatever he wants, now.

.

He dreams, again, and it's starting to get pretty fucking annoying to him.

He's eight, he's playing with a bird beneath a tree, its wings bent at an awkward angle and its neck twisted to the side. He's crouched down, poking the dead thing with a stick, turning it over and examining its open, frightened eyes. The last thing it saw was him.

He hears the crunch of leaves behind him.

"Kid," Neil asks, eyes wide and voice terrified. "What did you do?"

Ransom looks up at his uncle, at the dream mangled at the edges, twisting and twisting from some unforeseen deed he one day will commit. In this reality, he did.

"Ransom, what did you do?" Neil takes a step back and looks at his nephew, horrified. " _What have you done?_ "

Ransom looks at the bird, at the ghost of the feeling of its neck in his hands. At the memory of its pained squawk as he crushed its windpipe. Expecting catharsis at the end, some form of closure to end the rage in his belly, and only receiving a great sense of nothingness when the light dies out of its eyes.

"I killed it," he says, and he laughs.

The dream breaks in half, two halves of the same whole splitting and tumbling away. And Ransom, right in the midle, torn.

.

(In some better time, he would've asked: what changed?)

_In this reality, what didn't?_

.

_you are not who you think you are_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i procrastinated writing this chapter until like saturday because i was too anxious while planning and trying to make this chapter the perfect ending for act 1 but yknow what fuck it. i'm not writing a perfect story by any means but i'm writing the story i like to write and want to share. so here it is, the too-short chapter to wrap up act 1! i wrote the whole thing out and just decided that i love it and this act can absolutely not end any other way.
> 
> i hope you like this chapter! next up: a bit of an interlude between act 1 and 2. i want to give u guys a little sum'n: send me little ideas/excerpts/missing scenes you'd like to see regarding this whole act and i'll include them in the interlude. stuff like possible futures to some loops, backstory, answers to some questions, or maybe even outsider POVs 🥴 ? ? ? as long as they won't spoil future chapters, i'm so ready to write out what you guys want to see.
> 
> tell me what u guys think about this chapter/the whole act: id love to read your thoughts because kudos/comments feed my hungry writer brain and keep me going thank u
> 
> edit: thank you to hailie and PaperLanding for correcting the French!


	8. Interlude — one past, infinite presents, no future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interlude: A look at the world through Marta's eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! have a little interlude before we dive into the next act!
> 
> so this is in marta's POV, i'm just giving a little snippet into her thoughts/experiences and answering some questions you might have on your mind. 
> 
> enjoy!

.

_one past._

.

This is how Marta meets Ransom for the very first time. 

He comes stumbling into the library, drunk out of his mind and being held up by Harlan. He’s laughing at something he said, probably, giggles coming out of his lips like breaths squeezed out of a dying animal. There’s sweat on his face and tear tracks in distinct lines down his cheeks. 

She looks up from her book, alarmed, and helps Harlan guide his grandson onto a chair. 

“Marta,” Harlan tells her grimly, both of them watching Ransom lying on the chair carelessly and giggling to himself, “meet my grandson.”

“That’s Ransom?” Marta asks, so cautious that her voice sounds timid to her. She hasn’t really met any member of the family. Just Harlan and Fran and Wanetta. 

Harlan nods after a beat. “Can you watch over him? I’ll get some water and towels. Maybe a bucket too.” He starts to get up, but she stops him.

“No, no it's fine, I’ll get them,” she says, and smiles reassuringly at her employer. Harlan returns the smile and settles down next to his grandson. 

As Marta leaves the room to get the items, she starts thinking to herself. Ransom...he’s the man Harlan likes to speak so fondly about. She knows nothing about him, yes, but Harlan does. And if what Harlan said about him is true, then she might just know how to navigate him. 

Was anything happening today that warranted a visit from him? No one else from the family came, so she can rule out big events or parties. It’s not an important date, and besides, she wouldn’t peg Ransom as the kind of person to visit his relatives on his free time. In fact, she thinks that he would be the kind of person to do the opposite to _spite_ his family.

She comes back to the library with her arms full of stuff to find Harlan crouching beside his grandson, murmuring to him. 

Harlan looks up at her when she sets the stuff down and offers him a glass of water. “Thank you,” he tells her softly

She nods and sits nearby, ready to help if needed.

“Oh,” Harlan said. “Ransom, meet Marta. Marta, Ransom.”

Ransom cocks his head to the side, giving her a once-over and sniffing. “Sure,” he says, voice hoarse, and Marta’s surprised he doesn’t try to give her the Fran treatment. Ask her to call him Hugh and all. He rolls around again and faces away.

After a beat, Marta asks, “Is he alright?”

“Had one too many bottles to drink.” Harlan shakes his head. “I should have stopped him after the first few glasses, but...”

“But...?” Marta prompts.

Harlan sighs. “But well, it’s an...important day for him. I couldn’t just, tell him to stop, you know.” He rubs the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. “I should have, I really should, but it’s _his_ day.”

Ransom barks out a laugh, then, and sits up, wincing as he does. He’s not looking at her, or even Harlan. His gaze belongs to the world outside the window, a million miles away from home.

“I’ll tell you what day it is,” he drawls, syllables mixing with one another. He cracks an awful smile. “Go on, Harlan.”

Harlan glares at his grandson. “Lie down,” he says heatedly.

Ransom laughs again, harsher, sadder. “Tell her what fucking day it is, godamnit.”

“Fine, but lay down,” Harlan says, and Ransom does.

Once he does, Harlan turns back to Marta. “It’s the anniversary of Neil’s death,” he says, voice grave. “Nine years ago, he passed.”

Neil Thrombey? Marta’s heard the name in passing. There’s a ghost that lives in the house, a ghost that exists in portraits, untouched belongings, and the pained look in Harlan’s eyes when she asks about them. 

“Were they close?” Marta asks, softly. 

Harlan glances at his grandson, who’d gone completely silent. So silent, in fact, that Marta’s hindbrain urges her to check if he’s still breathing. “Neil was...more of a parent to him than Linda or Richard are.”

She heard about Linda, too. About how she never wanted a child and when she did get one, she saw him as more of a tool to inherit her company than her own son. 

“Oh,” Marta says. It feels like intruding, but it feels right to know, too. Harlan’s not a closed-off person, and he shares everything with her. “What about you?”

“It doesn’t affect me as much,” Harlan says, and gives her a sad smile. “It’s so long ago, and I didn’t have any time to really grieve.” He sighs. “I was their pillar, Marta, I couldn’t crumble just like that.”

“Oh,” she says. The tragedy that haunts the Thrombey family, that lives behind every one of their pasts and memories. She looks at Ransom, who still hasn’t moved an inch. “I’m sorry.” She doesn’t know who she’s telling that to. “How...if you don’t mind me asking- how did he die?”

“Slit his fucking throat,” Ransom answers her, the first noise he makes in a while. He laughs self-deprecatingly, and it almost sounds like a sob. “Did you know? I came by his house like I always did. Joni and Meg were out. I tried calling, nothing, I rang the doorbell, _nothing_ , I barged in his room and there he was, slumped over a chair with a hand over his cut neck. Blood _fucking_ everywhere. Murder weapon missing.”

He turns around. There was the most terrifying smile on his face. Terrifying, not in the sense that he might pounce forward and strangle her, no. But terrifying in the sense that he might pounce up and throw himself out the nearest window. Marta’s scared, and not for herself.

“Did you know- they thought it was a murder; they didn’t find the knife, he was home alone, and Linda was freaking the fuck out and demanding an investigation.” He laughs, wheezing until it sounds painful. Marta flinches away from the sound. “And guess how they reacted when it was all for nothing! _He killed himself_ , can you believe that?”

So this is how she meets Ransom Drysdale. Not the man who flaunts his wealth and privileges and treats the world as a playground, but the man wrecked by a trauma that cut so deep that it lasted for years. Both parts of him scare her.

This is what Marta knows — as she watches Harlan’s face crumble and Ransom grow even more hysterical: he’s broken, and she should be careful around him. 

Her mother always cautioned her against rich, handsome, charming men. Men exactly like Ransom.

.

This is what Marta doesn’t know yet — because it’ll come years later when she looks back at their first meeting: he’s broken, and he’s not at the same time. Some part of him relishes at his own duality. 

And that’s what really scares her.

.

_infinite presents_

.

The thing about time loops is that no one remembers.

It’s thrust upon one person. One person who relives the same days over and over until they inevitably break out and return to a linear time. That person, and that person only, remembers the events of said time loop.

Everyone else belongs in linear time. They experience and remember only a certain strict, unfluctuating set of events originating from a version of loop iterations. But at the same time, they exist in all iterations simultaneously, a branch of consciousness so vast and so impossible that only one iteration truly, incomprehensibly exists.

The paradoxical nature of time, memory, and existence is broken and reformed to accomodate these time loops. One person, unhinged from time, traverses the infinite iterations of the same few days in what they experience as linear time. Everyone else, bound to time, experiences the infinite iterations of the same few days all at once and only remembers one past.

In several presents, Marta goes to prison. She’s innocent, and yet she’s still arrested. In some iterations, she realises it was Harlan’s grandson who murdered him and framed her, but she can’t say anything. In other iterations, she doesn’t know what happened but still received the blunt end of it all. 

In several presents, Marta wins. She weeded out the murderer with the help of detective Blanc. Sometimes, it’s Ransom. Other times, it’s another member of the family. No one is truly innocent. 

Sometimes, they get to know each other. Other times, she refers to him as Harlan’s grandson. 

Sometimes, she offers him a hand. He never takes it. It doesn’t matter anyway: she doesn’t remember any of it.

In several presents, Marta dies. 

In some iterations, she is dead, and yet in true reality, she isn’t. 

.

In some distant iteration, she _sees_ him, and he _sees_ her, too.

In his linear version of infinite iterations, this possibility doesn’t exist.

.

_no future_

.

The future doesn’t exist for her yet. It does, but it hasn’t arrived, and it won’t until the universe deems the loop complete. 

.

Marta looks down on the family, and they gaze up at her in varying degrees of disbelief, hatred, and regret. She lifts the mug to her lips and watches as the police car drives away.

.

Marta looks up at Ransom as the policemen lead her into the car. He’s gazing down at her, almost apologetic, but it’s all hidden under a veil of relieved victory. The pieces all fall into place, and her eyes widen. On the drive away from the house, she tries to tell them what really happened, to no avail.

.

Marta offers a hand to Ransom, and he doesn’t take it. He smiles up at her and somewhere deep inside, she still doesn’t but his genuineness. It’s as if something’s missing — there’s no spark in his eyes, no true reasurance in his words, underlying sadness in his expression. She steps through and leaves him behind.

.

Marta doesn’t inherit the will and no one goes to jail, because Harlan doesn’t die. She hasn’t talked to Harlan’s grandson in years and he never crosses her mind. Everything is fine. When Harlan goes to check up on his grandson, he’s missing.

.

Marta hears the news that Harlan’s grandson got into a car crash and died a horrible, painful death. She tries her best to console Harlan. The rest of the family grieves for him but to her, it doesn’t feel so genuine.

.

Marta plays three games of Go against Ransom and wins all of them. He plays so similarly to his grandfather that it’s almost her second nature to beat him.

.

Marta inherits the will and no one gets arrested. Harlan died weeks ago and she settles into her new, comfortable life.

.

Marta bleeds out on the floor of Harlan’s library. The last thing she sees is detective Blanc trying his damnedest to save her, and all she really wants to do is tell him that he’s doing it wrong. 

.

“Why did you do it?” she’ll ask him one day.

He’s going to shrug nonchalantly despite the heavy weight of the question. “I don’t know,” he’ll say, and it will be the truth. “I wanted to, maybe. Or it was the only path forward. I couldn’t really see anything else, then.”

“That’s not true,” she’ll say, “you _know_ it isn’t.”

“I can’t lie,” he’s going to remind her, but she won’t be so easily swayed by that certainty.

Some things are true, and certain, and they are immovable facts, yes. It doesn’t change the fact that things are how they will be.

She’s going to look at him, and she’s going to feel anger rise up in her. “And yet here we are,” she’s going to say, lowly.

He’s going to agree with her.

“ _Here we are_.”

.

The reality is that there are no endings where he is headed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so finals are coming and i want to take a little break from this story. don't worry! i'm not abandoning it — i just need to focus on my studies for a few weeks, then i'm going to come back to this story and finish it! i think i'll be away for...maybe two weeks? expect an update mid may. that being said, i'll still be active on ao3 and will be responding to any and all comments i receive!
> 
> expect act 2 to be absolutely batshit insane. lots of time travel, self-loathing, violence, and angst all around!
> 
> leave some kudos/comments! they make my day and keep me going!!!
> 
> i'll see you guys in may!

**Author's Note:**

> that’s the idea, folks. i don’t speak french please don’t hunt me down.
> 
> thanks for reading! kudos/comments are appreciated ;)


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